Fight ‘Em ‘Til We Can’t

The February administration of the Montana Bar Exam starts today and runs through Wednesday. Good luck to all the brave souls sitting down today for that special form of torture. Remember that it’s only a three day (!) exam and it’s not like your whole future depends on how you perform.

Oh. Wait.

But, and so, if you find yourself frustrated by the bar exam, you could always challenge your grader to a little test of your own. For example, you could ask your grader to use calculus to find the identity of Batman. That’ll show ‘em!

Good luck test-takers! [tags]bar exam, humor[/tags]

Here’s a proposal for people in positions to hire public defenders: Ask your new (and current) employees to sign an agreement not to compete — an agreement that any lawyer who leaves your office will not accept a position as a prosecutor within your jurisdiction for at least one year after he/she leaves your employ.

Why? It’s fine to switch sides if that’s where your ideology/heart/pocketbook/whatever leads you. But when it potentially damages your former clients and those of everyone else in your office, then you’re crossing a line that ought not be crossed. An agreement not to compete would be a reasonable way to prevent this.

I started thinking about this a few weeks ago when Skelly noted a conversation on a law student forum about how hard it might be for law students to get summer internships with public defender offices. The conversation revolved around whether you’d help or hurt your chances by having experience working as a prosecutor intern, and Skelly mused about whether PD offices should be hiring former prosecutors—not just as interns but as attorneys.

I agree w/Skelly that more harm than good would come from some sort of automatic DQ rule forbidding PD offices from hiring former prosecutors. As he points out, if PD offices made a hard and fast rule like that, good people like Skelly would not have jobs as defenders. In my own office we have several former prosecutors who do great work and I’m sure that happens everywhere.

However, what happens when someone goes the other way—from defender to prosecutor? Generally nothing, and there’s no harm done. But when someone moves from one side to the other in the same jurisdiction—that changes everything. Potential conflicts of interest abound, plus it just leaves a bad taste in the mouths of all of that person’s former colleagues. Hence the need for the agreement not to compete—no switching sides in the same jurisdiction for at least a year.

Thoughts?

See also: The sleeping with the enemy theory of criminal defense by Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer which argues that being a prosecutor first is a great way to get experience for later becoming a good private defender. [tags]ethics, prosecutors[/tags]

Officials are at a loss to explain how they allowed a homeless, mentally ill man accused of stealing a soda to languish in jail for 17 months. ⇒

“if you want to get to my client, you’ll have to come through me first.” ⇒

Guantanamo prisoner Adel Hamad’s lawyers . . . have taken an unusual step: they have given the unclassified documents relating to their client’s case to a group of online activists who have formed Project Hamad, a website on the detainee’s behalf. They’ve also made a video about the case and put it on YouTube. ⇒

Oddly enough, it seems that the officer was able to generate an acceptable excuse to dodge the penalty for speeding, while simultaneously planning to press charges against the dutiful couple for “stalking.” So, dear readers, how exactly does an immobile, stationary camera go about stalking someone, hmm? ⇒

From Injustice Anywhere, a public defender currently working in Washington State, comes this advice for new and aspiring public defenders:

Don’t do it unless you believe in what you are doing. You will rarely get fulfillment from this job if you are relying on the gratitude of individual clients. Don’t get me wrong. The moments when you get that are fantastic—I have shed many tears in those moments. But, in my experience, they are few and far between (albeit more frequent in juvenile cases than they were in adult land). I believe that your reward—your fulfillment—has to come from knowing that the rights of everyone in this country are being protected because of the work you and your fellow defense attorneys are doing for individual clients each and every day.

That’s just a bit of the great perspective to be found in Injustice Anywhere’s (IA’s) interview withPublic Defender Stuff as part of the latter’s Monday Musings series. PD Stuff has emerged in the last year as both a clearinghouse for indigent defense news and as one of the best indigent defense blogs in its own right. Thank you, PD Stuff!

IA’s words of wisdom make me wonder: What words of wisdom would other experienced public defenders give to their new and aspiring colleagues? [tags]advice[/tags]

I should have pointed out to him that falsely representing your monetary situation on a public defender evaluation is a federal offense. ⇒

The Wyoming theory . . . will lead to a “sort of national race in which no state wants to be seen as a destination for convicted sex offenders. ⇒

A Walhalla man might have had a good reason for not responding to officers who surrounded his home: He was asleep in a recliner when the SWAT team found him after a four-hour standoff, authorities said. ⇒