South Carolina Criminal Defense Blog

Yesterday, I had a consent bond order that needed to be signed by a judge, who just happened to be holding civil non-jury court. Because I had a small stack of orders that needed to be reviewed and signed, the judge had me wait until he finished with the cases in front of him, which took about 3 hours. Non-jury court consists of a lot of motions for dismissal, motions for summary judgment, motions to compel arbitration, and various other pre-trial litigation in civil cases. People arguing and fighting tooth and nail over who gets to take whose money, in other words.

After watching about 30 minutes, my brain was screaming and I was fighting sleep. I was reminded forcefully of why I practice criminal defense and refuse to accept civil cases of any kind. It's because I give a shit about what I do - I could care less who gets whose money. I understand that civil attorneys in general make a considerably better income than criminal defense attorneys, but I don't do this for the money. Don't get me wrong, I charge a healthy fee and I have to, but if it was about money I would be suing this corporation or that, and I'd be up there in civil non-jury court arguing with someone's insurance company about where the money goes.

Defense attorneys, by and large, don't do this for the money. We have to pay the bills and run an office, and compensation is good, but we do this because we love what we do and because we believe in what we do, whether it is helping people or whether it is fighting to preserve what little rights we have left as citizens.

In law school, I remember there was an adjunct professor who taught (and practiced) insurance law. Near the end of the semester, he gave a talk about the practical realities of the practice of law. The only thing from that talk that I remember was when he said that it was a good idea to go to work as a public defender or a prosecutor for a couple of years, but that you shouldn't stay there. He said if you stay too long you will never be able to get into the swing of billing by the hour, and prospective employers would label you as a "cause lawyer." He said "cause lawyer" like this was a bad thing.

I was confused. I (mistakenly) thought that lawyers became lawyers because they wanted to fight for a cause. I thought that was what lawyers do. I've discovered that is what some lawyers do, but many just want a job that pays them a lot of money. I decided, after that class in law school, that I was a "cause lawyer," and that has stuck with me over the years, even in private practice. There are various causes that we fight for - first and foremost the cause, whatever it is, of the client who is sitting in front of us at any given moment. We move from cause to cause over time, and sometimes we take on an over-arching cause, or an issue that needs to be addressed. For me at the moment, I am concerned with reform of our indigent defense system in South Carolina, and I am concerned with reform of our rules which allow for jailhouse snitches to perjure themselves at the request of prosecutors.

I suppose for many civil attorneys, they do have a cause, which is the motivation to earn as much money as possible. I don't suppose there is anything wrong with that at all, but it is not for everyone.