Getting to know your clients
There is more to successful criminal defense than knowing the law and having the will to fight for your clients. Another indispensable ingredient to getting good results in any case is knowing and understanding clients. Every client has a different experience and a different story, and that experience must be shared with the prosecutor, the judge, and the jury when it comes to a trial.
The only way to learn that experience and to understand a client's story is to spend time with the client and to talk to them. If I am going to tell a client's story, I have to learn who they are and what makes them that way. I have to learn whether they committed the crime they are charged with, and if so why. I have to accept my clients' calls and always return their calls, learn from my client's families, and meet with my clients in person, even when that means multiple trips to the jail.
I have to be able to persuade a prosecutor, a judge, and a jury that the client is a human being and not just a defendant. The prosecutor, the police, the judge, and the jury will demonize the defendant in a criminal case if they are not told and shown that the defendant is a human being, with a family, hopes, dreams, likes, dislikes, loves, and problems like any other human being has.
The facts that are learned from a client are woven together with the facts that the government provides, and provide the framework for the story that must be told. The facts as presented by the government are cold facts that are unsympathetic to the defendant and that are geared towards obtaining a conviction. My job is to present the facts to the prosecutor, the judge, and the jury through the defendant's eyes, usually a very different perspective from what the police or alleged victims see.
