Chapter 3: Aren't You Afraid to Deal With Those People?

— -- Who are those people?

Until their son, uncle, dentist, or stockbroker gets arrested for something, most people assume that the people who get arrested are low-life degenerates who spend their days stealing from us and their evenings having sex with animals and downloading child pornography on the Internet. This hardly describes Martha Stewart, Kobe Bryant, Robert Blake, or your brother-in-law. In truth, almost anyone can find his or her way into the criminal justice system. Those folks who have been unlucky enough to get arrested come from all walks of life and should not be painted with the broad brush of being some kind of untermenschen!

But the Ivy League pedigree of your client does not mean they are going to be easy to deal with; often, the reverse is true. Most criminal defense lawyers will tell you they would much rather represent a career criminal or a guy from the street than a dot-com, hedge-fund yuppie with a big bank account. This is true for nay number of reason. The street guy has been through this process before. He knows that I am his only shot of staying out of jail, or at least minimizing his time. Regardless of his formal education, he is probably "court-wise" and knows he should tell me the straight story so we don't get surprised or sandbagged later on in the case. He may not be proud of his actions, but is generally not too embarrassed to tell me the whole story.

An interesting fact about the street criminal concerns who actually hires me. The hedge-fund guy, if he is locked up, send his family, friend, or real lawyer to meet with me, and pay me if they decide I am the one they want. The street guy sends his "people". His people may be relatives, but I often never get the real picture of who they are. It isn't really important, other than the fact that I must satisfy myself that they are not paying me with drug money or money that been stolen from the victim in the case at hand (or maybe from another victim of a previous crime).