I had a bad day today. A client didn't get the outcome we were hoping for at sentencing. He's not going to prison, so that's a plus, but I wasn't able to convince the sentencing judge to grant the client a deferred judgment, so he's now a 21 year old convicted felon. I knew it was going to be an uphill battle, but that doesn't lessen the impact. After we were done I had to explain the situation to his mom and dad...and grandfather....and aunt.....and uncle. Not a fun afternoon.
This line of work can be very unfulfilling sometimes. There are days when it is all you can do to convince yourself that being a criminal defense attorney does matter. Its the nature of the beast I guess. The criminal justice system is adversarial in nature, so there is always going to be a "winner" and a "loser". Even where the parties agree on a recommendation, the cases where the defendant or the State doesn't feel that there was some issue that didn't go their way are few and far between.
One of the hardest things to learn as a defense attorney (or a prosecutor for that matter) is how to deal with a bad outcome in a case. It is not taught in any classroom at law school. Even in the clinical programs it isn't something that most law students get exposed to. I was lucky enough to get a lot of those experiences (good and bad) as a prosecutor. I can clearly remember a crack cocaine case where I took a bad beat. I was still a fairly new drug prosecutor with Polk County and I nearly cried when I was talking to the case agent afterwords. I was at a loss to explain what happened and had no answers. It basically came down to...sometimes you lose when you should win.
When you are a criminal defense attorney, a bad beat is even harder to take, and endlessly harder to discuss with the client. The conversation will go something like this:
Defendant: So, what happens next?
Defense Attorney: Well, I go back to the office...and you go to prison.
You can just about imagine how hard that is to explain. It's also emotionally draining, because you know that the client was relying on you. You tell yourself that the facts make the case, and that is true, but it still stings. It is clearly my least favorite thing about this profession. The only thing to do is to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get back on the horse. There are other people out there who need someone to fight for them. Besides, if you can't handle disappointment, you shouldn't have gone to law school in the first place.
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