In my state, you have an absolute right to plead guilty at arraignment but not at any other time. Client was charged with a gross misdemeanor DUI with several aggravates. Cops charge the GM instead of the felony for various reasons, and it's ineffective not to advise the client about the right to plead guilty. Its a two-car collision with an ensuing fight and spontaneous utterances regarding intoxication, and they ended up blowing a .19 so there's nothing to suppress and no hope at trial. I advise this client they ought to plead to the DUI at arraignment. After I started talking to them, I'm notified that their family retained private counsel. He shows up at the jail like 45 minutes late, I give him the file and tell him what I told them. He smugly sneers and says "I don't meet and plead."
Anyways they're on their second year in prison now because after arraignment the prosecutors dismissed without and refiled as a felony, and with several aggravators that add years with no good time, plus how many points they had, it wound up in the 70-something month range.
Edit to obscure clients pronouns
Weewoo weewoo assigned counsel police! 🚨
I think I do a pretty good job, but I'm not doing this stuff full time. Therefore, I think it's better for folks to get a PD. I guess mileage may vary depending on where you practice, but I always get the same exact plea offer the PDs would get.
Sounds like you actually work up your cases. I’m telling you some of these guys don’t even do that. They don’t read discovery, never look at body cams, and just plea the first offer they are given.
Sounds familiar. You're right, I do try to negotiate better plea deals than those which are offered to me when it seems like my client is getting the shit end of the stick.
But you're also right about some private attorneys not giving a damn. We just had a guy get suspended for 6 months because he overbilled every file and missed too many appearance dates. I can't imagine what it was like to be repped by him. I doubt he will be getting any more referrals when he's back from his suspension.
I always tell clients who want to hire private attorneys that whoever they hire will probably be better about answering their calls than I am, and that I will do anything else at least as well as a private attorney.
Private attorney here, in business long enough that I'm not fishing for clients. This is EXACTLY what I tell a potential criminal client- if they're in it for the hand-holding, I'll do that better than a PD with 150 cases; if they have some boutique litigation need (think, rich tech bro wanting to mount novel constitutional challenge) then I can do that. But if they just need a competent, informed defense, they should save their money and go with the PD.
This is in the Bay Area where our PD's are of very high quality; YMMV.
Years ago when I was a baby PD I had to conflict off a case. Defendant was charged with indecent exposure, which carried lifetime sex offender registration at the time. *I* knew that the DA likely couldn't prove the case because it was old. The public restroom in question had since been demolished.
I watched conflict counsel (a private lawyer) plead this poor guy out to *lifetime sex offender registration* on a BS, unproveable case. It kept me up some nights for a while.
In my Jxn, whenever I meet folks who hate their “public defender,” I ask “yikes who is it?” And they tell me the attorney’s name, it is *always* private court-appointed counsel. Like yeah no shit that guy sucks, everyone in the courthouse knows it and he could only dream of our office ever deigning to hire him.
You could probably solve the problem by having the client move the court to allow you to sub in for the attorney of record. Given the circumstances, I doubt the court would deny the motion.
This is called Tortious Interference with Economic Relations, and you can be sued for it at the very least. I wouldn’t rule out disciplinary action from the bar.
Edit: Every single PD who upvotes that original comment is wet behind the ears. I guarantee it.
Liberty trumps every single one of those concerns. I've been in public defense for over 20 years and I wouldn't hesitate to suggest that the client avail himself of every reasonable method to free himself from confinement. The private attorney was not retained, merely appointed, and for whatever reason isn't fulfilling the duties of the appointment. I would happily accept a bar complaint under these circumstances.
Go ahead and file that suit on behalf of the retained attorney who has failed to return multiple communications over a week or otherwise maintain communications with co-counsel resulting in material prejudice to his client.
Advising the client that they have the right to choose their attorney is not grounds for a civil claim.
Also most likely scenario is the original misdemeanor is over 7 years old and the retained attorney orobably (negligently) lost track of it, closed his file, and it’s probably shredded already.
This job has absolutely tanked my regard for the private defense bar. The percentage of privates whose work is *approximately* as good as a replacement level PD's is alarmingly low.
That’s what alarms me. So this post is not directed towards the big private attorneys. You see them. The ones who teach CLEs and know what the hell they’re doing. I know a few. But what I know more of is over worked privates with more cases than even I have and they don’t know their elbow from their asshole. And my clients will BRAG about hiring these guys and I’m laughing knowing in a few weeks they’ll be appointing me back
It’s more complicated than that. If a felon has the $20,000 retainer he can hire someone with staff including an investigator.
If a felon is “in between” his mother who you knew from when you were kids comes to your office with $1789.00 crying for help. The prosecutors know this. I’ve tried plenty of cases that cost me money but there’s a limit.
It’s easy to criticize the “private”, especially when you’re the state employed social worker or parole officer complaining about the unpaid conservator, or pro bono attorney doing a divorce getting grief from the legal service office that asked you to do it because your report is due. I’m literally going to dig a grave for an indigent deceased client this weekend.
I rehomed a dog in an emergency fashion when a woman was sent to a convalescent home and found myself called on the carpet for not filing the proper paperwork. Literally thought to myself “here I am again in a room full of motherfuckers giving me a hard time while I’m the only person in the room not getting paid.
There’s probably more to the issue.
I don't have the data in front of me but I actually did research on this for my undergrad senior capstone. I was only able to get substantive data from two metro areas (NY and Miami) but there were dozens of studies done about it. The splits between being found guilty or not guilty were nearly identical (if I remember the difference was around .5% in favor of private). The only place there was a statistical correlation was in private counsel being able to obtain sentences where the only penalty was a fine. Pretty sure that had more to do with the offense as traffic and white collar crime may be the most likely to have solely financial penalties and most don't retain an attorney for one and the other more often than not has the money to have private counsel on retainer.
I'd be interested to see deeper studies with data that controlled for offense and also evaluated sentence length to see if there may be a difference there
We recently checked for our jurisdiction 2023:
Full acquittals
PDs: 33% of trials
Privately retained: 25%
Conflict PD cases: 23%
County appointments: 12% (people who make too much for the PD but the county gives them a lawyer they have to pay back)
The numbers were also good for split verdicts, only 30% of PD clients were convicted of every charge they were accused of.
Admittedly in my region it’s word of mouth, past pleas I see, and just generally who is trying cases the most.
However counties like Harris in Texas have done studies and the PD office there vastly out performed the local private defense bar. You might be able to search those.
Interesting. I wasn’t doubting you I just always heard the classic “private takes the first deal that plops on the table” but i never stopped to consider that in the aggregate
I think it would be tricky to study it because of the huge selection effects at play. People who qualify for the PD probably have more charges against them/a longer prior record and are probably less likely to have support networks and character references that could be used to help them.
And PDs are pretty much by definition not going to be handling some types of cases like white collar crime.
Just my two cents, no reason to get mad at the actual clients that say they want to get a real attorney or don’t like their public pretender. They just don’t know.
I felt this. Lol well snd the funny thing is in my JD it’s kind of a good old boys thing. Often times I have a better rapport with the prosecutors than guys from out of town. The state here knows if they’re going against my office they’re gonna have to work pretty damn hard even if the case is good for them.
I recently had a client on a first lifetime DUI who was thinking about hiring an attorney his family had used but wanted to meet with me first before he shelled out. I talk to him about options and he says his guy recommended a DP and that was all he wanted to talk to me about.
These guys are so fucking lazy they won't even negotiate a neg when they can just tell their clients to throw even more money at the problem and make it go away instead.
It’s mainly about time. Most retained attorneys can spend a lot more time on the case. Some of worthless plea mills and some public defenders are absolute warriors.
In my past experience as a prosecutor this was definitely true. I once had a pretty standard DWI, he blew like a .20, all the SFSTs were on CCTV. The CCTV even picked up in 4k him driving with his cellphone out. I tried offering his private attorney a pretty good deal with minimal jail time (the state i was in had mandatory minimums for that BAC, and i offerred the minimum). He blows me off. He drags out the case foe a year, they go to trial and lose. Ending up getting sentenced triple what I had offered. And that is on top of what was no doubt a hefty bill seeing as the docket had close to 80 filings in it as the attorney kicked and screamed contesting every routine aspect of the traffic stop (and losing all those motions)
I was with you until the part where you and your colleagues are laughing at clients who didn’t have the information you have and got hoodwinked by marketing ploys. That’s just mean…
Yeah, a very small percentage of the private attorneys here are as good as the PDs. Too many former DAs and people who generally don't care about anything but getting their money.
OP "laughing at" clients that decide to hire attorneys that he is jealous of, coupled with his post history regarding crying about being single is hilarious.
Someone in my office had pretty much worked out a split on a blind plea with the judge guy wouldn’t blind plea with PD hired some “big shot” private lawyer and pled to 18 years.
So true, there are a couple of good private criminal lawyers whom I respect but Im at the point where if a file lands on my desk where private counsel had previously done work on the case then I assume they have done something to screw over my client. And I am relatively fresh in my office, my trainer had a horror story about a client where she had a rock solid alibi for the guy, but then his sister hired him a private attorney who plead him out to a state prison sentence, which he is still serving many years later.
Part of it is just the economics make less sense for a paid attorney (when the client is paying, some of the hearings and motions I do for discovery purposes only dont really make sense), but a lot of times I look at the mistake and shake my head and ask what on earth were they thinking with this.
The average public defender is significantly better than the average private attorney.
The best public defenders are about as good as the best private attorneys.
The worst public defenders are still better than the worst private attorneys.
On average, pds are better.
Not sure about client satisfaction tho. I see in consumer reports really shitty cars get rated very high for customer satisfaction.
I take the bar in July and will then work for a private attorney. He is requiring me to do part-time assigned counsel because he did it for the first 10-12 years of his career. He said it was the best way to develop and get experience. He also got to know all the prosecutors and interacted with them more than if he didn’t do it. He is amazing and gets great reviews compared to other private attorneys, but I’m guessing his work as assigned counsel is what helped him.
I don't care much for retained attorneys (family law, here), but if a client wants to hire private counsel In pretty much encouraging them so that I have one less file. (Also, it's a clear indication they're not happy with my representation. )
In my state, you have an absolute right to plead guilty at arraignment but not at any other time. Client was charged with a gross misdemeanor DUI with several aggravates. Cops charge the GM instead of the felony for various reasons, and it's ineffective not to advise the client about the right to plead guilty. Its a two-car collision with an ensuing fight and spontaneous utterances regarding intoxication, and they ended up blowing a .19 so there's nothing to suppress and no hope at trial. I advise this client they ought to plead to the DUI at arraignment. After I started talking to them, I'm notified that their family retained private counsel. He shows up at the jail like 45 minutes late, I give him the file and tell him what I told them. He smugly sneers and says "I don't meet and plead." Anyways they're on their second year in prison now because after arraignment the prosecutors dismissed without and refiled as a felony, and with several aggravators that add years with no good time, plus how many points they had, it wound up in the 70-something month range. Edit to obscure clients pronouns
Same in my jdx. There’s a handful of Jedi level private defense attorneys, but the vast majority of them are not worthy of their retainer.
Weewoo weewoo assigned counsel police! 🚨 I think I do a pretty good job, but I'm not doing this stuff full time. Therefore, I think it's better for folks to get a PD. I guess mileage may vary depending on where you practice, but I always get the same exact plea offer the PDs would get.
Sounds like you actually work up your cases. I’m telling you some of these guys don’t even do that. They don’t read discovery, never look at body cams, and just plea the first offer they are given.
Sounds familiar. You're right, I do try to negotiate better plea deals than those which are offered to me when it seems like my client is getting the shit end of the stick. But you're also right about some private attorneys not giving a damn. We just had a guy get suspended for 6 months because he overbilled every file and missed too many appearance dates. I can't imagine what it was like to be repped by him. I doubt he will be getting any more referrals when he's back from his suspension.
Yeah something about how he types tells me that too
I always tell clients who want to hire private attorneys that whoever they hire will probably be better about answering their calls than I am, and that I will do anything else at least as well as a private attorney.
Private attorney here, in business long enough that I'm not fishing for clients. This is EXACTLY what I tell a potential criminal client- if they're in it for the hand-holding, I'll do that better than a PD with 150 cases; if they have some boutique litigation need (think, rich tech bro wanting to mount novel constitutional challenge) then I can do that. But if they just need a competent, informed defense, they should save their money and go with the PD. This is in the Bay Area where our PD's are of very high quality; YMMV.
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Years ago when I was a baby PD I had to conflict off a case. Defendant was charged with indecent exposure, which carried lifetime sex offender registration at the time. *I* knew that the DA likely couldn't prove the case because it was old. The public restroom in question had since been demolished. I watched conflict counsel (a private lawyer) plead this poor guy out to *lifetime sex offender registration* on a BS, unproveable case. It kept me up some nights for a while.
If this is CA, pleading anyone out to a misdo 314 when they aren’t already on the registry is malpractice (not actually, but you know what I mean).
Could you explain why?
Being on the registry is so catastrophically bad for your client’s life. It’s worth the risk of going to trial to try to avoid on a misdemeanor.
“I don’t want no public pretender” I hear on jail calls…
In my Jxn, whenever I meet folks who hate their “public defender,” I ask “yikes who is it?” And they tell me the attorney’s name, it is *always* private court-appointed counsel. Like yeah no shit that guy sucks, everyone in the courthouse knows it and he could only dream of our office ever deigning to hire him.
You could probably solve the problem by having the client move the court to allow you to sub in for the attorney of record. Given the circumstances, I doubt the court would deny the motion.
This is called Tortious Interference with Economic Relations, and you can be sued for it at the very least. I wouldn’t rule out disciplinary action from the bar. Edit: Every single PD who upvotes that original comment is wet behind the ears. I guarantee it.
Liberty trumps every single one of those concerns. I've been in public defense for over 20 years and I wouldn't hesitate to suggest that the client avail himself of every reasonable method to free himself from confinement. The private attorney was not retained, merely appointed, and for whatever reason isn't fulfilling the duties of the appointment. I would happily accept a bar complaint under these circumstances.
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"The ends justify the means" of getting your client out of jail? Yeah, DAC's generally ok with that radical position.
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Wow. You are a lot. Do you need a snack?
Someone obviously had uh, one too many tortiously interfered clients I guess 🫠
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Lol, ok. I hope you have a great weekend!
Wow. Every thread has one. Doubt that guy is gonna enjoy his weekend, or anything, for that matter.
Go ahead and file that suit on behalf of the retained attorney who has failed to return multiple communications over a week or otherwise maintain communications with co-counsel resulting in material prejudice to his client. Advising the client that they have the right to choose their attorney is not grounds for a civil claim. Also most likely scenario is the original misdemeanor is over 7 years old and the retained attorney orobably (negligently) lost track of it, closed his file, and it’s probably shredded already.
This job has absolutely tanked my regard for the private defense bar. The percentage of privates whose work is *approximately* as good as a replacement level PD's is alarmingly low.
That’s what alarms me. So this post is not directed towards the big private attorneys. You see them. The ones who teach CLEs and know what the hell they’re doing. I know a few. But what I know more of is over worked privates with more cases than even I have and they don’t know their elbow from their asshole. And my clients will BRAG about hiring these guys and I’m laughing knowing in a few weeks they’ll be appointing me back
It’s more complicated than that. If a felon has the $20,000 retainer he can hire someone with staff including an investigator. If a felon is “in between” his mother who you knew from when you were kids comes to your office with $1789.00 crying for help. The prosecutors know this. I’ve tried plenty of cases that cost me money but there’s a limit. It’s easy to criticize the “private”, especially when you’re the state employed social worker or parole officer complaining about the unpaid conservator, or pro bono attorney doing a divorce getting grief from the legal service office that asked you to do it because your report is due. I’m literally going to dig a grave for an indigent deceased client this weekend. I rehomed a dog in an emergency fashion when a woman was sent to a convalescent home and found myself called on the carpet for not filing the proper paperwork. Literally thought to myself “here I am again in a room full of motherfuckers giving me a hard time while I’m the only person in the room not getting paid. There’s probably more to the issue.
I disagree but only bc I was a PD for 3 years BEFORE I went private.
Where can you get the statistic of how PDs do measured up against private in their area? Or just word of mouth and reputation?
I don't have the data in front of me but I actually did research on this for my undergrad senior capstone. I was only able to get substantive data from two metro areas (NY and Miami) but there were dozens of studies done about it. The splits between being found guilty or not guilty were nearly identical (if I remember the difference was around .5% in favor of private). The only place there was a statistical correlation was in private counsel being able to obtain sentences where the only penalty was a fine. Pretty sure that had more to do with the offense as traffic and white collar crime may be the most likely to have solely financial penalties and most don't retain an attorney for one and the other more often than not has the money to have private counsel on retainer. I'd be interested to see deeper studies with data that controlled for offense and also evaluated sentence length to see if there may be a difference there
Oh look who showed up to this rodeo all shiny and covered in stars. This is very interesting and I will look at this research
You're funny.
Why thank you man of frozen cream
We recently checked for our jurisdiction 2023: Full acquittals PDs: 33% of trials Privately retained: 25% Conflict PD cases: 23% County appointments: 12% (people who make too much for the PD but the county gives them a lawyer they have to pay back) The numbers were also good for split verdicts, only 30% of PD clients were convicted of every charge they were accused of.
How are you able to check? Is the data publicly available?
We requested the data from the court tracking system and crunched the numbers ourselves.
Admittedly in my region it’s word of mouth, past pleas I see, and just generally who is trying cases the most. However counties like Harris in Texas have done studies and the PD office there vastly out performed the local private defense bar. You might be able to search those.
Interesting. I wasn’t doubting you I just always heard the classic “private takes the first deal that plops on the table” but i never stopped to consider that in the aggregate
https://radleybalko.substack.com/p/the-perpetual-crisis-in-indigent Stats in this series, RAND report has really good stats
They did a study in sf.
Did not know this
I think it would be tricky to study it because of the huge selection effects at play. People who qualify for the PD probably have more charges against them/a longer prior record and are probably less likely to have support networks and character references that could be used to help them. And PDs are pretty much by definition not going to be handling some types of cases like white collar crime.
Whats your opinion on a PD thats now a Private Attorney? That who i have now for my case. She was a public defender for 2 years.
Some are good. Pd experience is a plus.
Just my two cents, no reason to get mad at the actual clients that say they want to get a real attorney or don’t like their public pretender. They just don’t know.
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I felt this. Lol well snd the funny thing is in my JD it’s kind of a good old boys thing. Often times I have a better rapport with the prosecutors than guys from out of town. The state here knows if they’re going against my office they’re gonna have to work pretty damn hard even if the case is good for them.
I recently had a client on a first lifetime DUI who was thinking about hiring an attorney his family had used but wanted to meet with me first before he shelled out. I talk to him about options and he says his guy recommended a DP and that was all he wanted to talk to me about. These guys are so fucking lazy they won't even negotiate a neg when they can just tell their clients to throw even more money at the problem and make it go away instead.
It’s mainly about time. Most retained attorneys can spend a lot more time on the case. Some of worthless plea mills and some public defenders are absolute warriors.
In my past experience as a prosecutor this was definitely true. I once had a pretty standard DWI, he blew like a .20, all the SFSTs were on CCTV. The CCTV even picked up in 4k him driving with his cellphone out. I tried offering his private attorney a pretty good deal with minimal jail time (the state i was in had mandatory minimums for that BAC, and i offerred the minimum). He blows me off. He drags out the case foe a year, they go to trial and lose. Ending up getting sentenced triple what I had offered. And that is on top of what was no doubt a hefty bill seeing as the docket had close to 80 filings in it as the attorney kicked and screamed contesting every routine aspect of the traffic stop (and losing all those motions)
I was with you until the part where you and your colleagues are laughing at clients who didn’t have the information you have and got hoodwinked by marketing ploys. That’s just mean…
And the PDs get the post-conviction later . . .
Yeah, a very small percentage of the private attorneys here are as good as the PDs. Too many former DAs and people who generally don't care about anything but getting their money.
OP "laughing at" clients that decide to hire attorneys that he is jealous of, coupled with his post history regarding crying about being single is hilarious.
Someone in my office had pretty much worked out a split on a blind plea with the judge guy wouldn’t blind plea with PD hired some “big shot” private lawyer and pled to 18 years.
Can I ask what state?
So true, there are a couple of good private criminal lawyers whom I respect but Im at the point where if a file lands on my desk where private counsel had previously done work on the case then I assume they have done something to screw over my client. And I am relatively fresh in my office, my trainer had a horror story about a client where she had a rock solid alibi for the guy, but then his sister hired him a private attorney who plead him out to a state prison sentence, which he is still serving many years later. Part of it is just the economics make less sense for a paid attorney (when the client is paying, some of the hearings and motions I do for discovery purposes only dont really make sense), but a lot of times I look at the mistake and shake my head and ask what on earth were they thinking with this.
The average public defender is significantly better than the average private attorney. The best public defenders are about as good as the best private attorneys. The worst public defenders are still better than the worst private attorneys. On average, pds are better. Not sure about client satisfaction tho. I see in consumer reports really shitty cars get rated very high for customer satisfaction.
I take the bar in July and will then work for a private attorney. He is requiring me to do part-time assigned counsel because he did it for the first 10-12 years of his career. He said it was the best way to develop and get experience. He also got to know all the prosecutors and interacted with them more than if he didn’t do it. He is amazing and gets great reviews compared to other private attorneys, but I’m guessing his work as assigned counsel is what helped him.
preach
This
That’s because you don’t deal with good ones. The good attorneys are in big firms working on business disputes.
I don't care much for retained attorneys (family law, here), but if a client wants to hire private counsel In pretty much encouraging them so that I have one less file. (Also, it's a clear indication they're not happy with my representation. )
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Which part don't you understand? Or is it my dialect?