UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

NEW SPECIMENS OLD SPECIMENS THE SCIENTIST MY LOG CONTACT ME
2001-07-10 - 6:39 a.m.

THE RIGHT THING BY ACCIDENT

I became a public defender for all the wrong reasons. I did not set out to save the world or to try to keep the state from rolling over the little guy. I did not set out to tweak the establishment. Ten years ago, I saw an opportunity to have an interesting part-time job and I took it. And it�s been exactly the right decision.

As a general rule, I�m at my best with difficult clients�and many public defender clients are difficult. Our investigator asked me today where I get the patience. It�s not patience. It�s more a pragmatic sense of what it takes to get the parade from point A to point B (or, with some of my mental health clients, what it takes just to find point A). I can do whatever it takes as long as I can see that going slow is more likely to get me there than rushing.

Even before I became a public defender, most of my legal career was spent in the public sector. I have a high need for as much autonomy as I can get. I put in enough time at a large firm to know I could make it but didn�t want to. I don�t like carrying someone else�s briefcase. I don�t make a very good yes-man (and yet I wonder why my children won�t take orders.)

I am the policeman of the criminal justice system. If I don�t point out when it is wrong, who will? If I don�t try to hold the system to its ideals, how can we ever be sure that it won�t turn on us? We need someone who will chance saying that the emperor has no clothes. Being blunt, this role suits me.

A large portion of my job is reading transcripts, analyzing cases, writing persuasive pieces, and then doing it again for another client. Finding fulfillment in the daily grind of cases requires a strong admiration for Don Quixote and the sticking ability of the bubble gum someone left under the desk (and I say that knowing just how little fondness I have for gum). It also requires a large ego and mine qualifies.

Sometimes it�s nice to discover you�ve done the right thing by accident.

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