Mediocre p.d.'s need love too

Thank you to Erik for e-mailing me this great public defender story. Not great as in, this is a profile of a great p.d., or, this story is great for public defenders and our image in general. Instead, "great" as in how the reporter gets inside the skin of a "nobody" who's not a particularly great lawyer and takes us for a walk in his world:

The $40 Lawyer - In his own defense

"After passing the Bar exam on his fourth try, Charley Demosthenous wasn't exactly a hot property. Even his father thought he should go sell screwdrivers. Representing the poor and miserable was his last chance to be somebody."

This one's for the non true believers, for the ones among us who never wanted to be public defenders, but were given a chance:

At 27, two years out of law school and a year out of steady work... no one's eager to hire an inexperienced attorney who finished near the bottom of his class and failed the Florida Bar exam three times...

"Why do you want to be a public defender?" he is asked. "The State Attorney's Office wasn't hiring," he answers.

The bosses at the Public Defender's Office love an underdog. They know the qualities that make a good PD are more elusive than what a test can measure. Besides, the job burns lawyers out so fast - they stay about three years, on average - that they need a constant stream of new ones. They take a chance on Charley Demosthenous.

As he goes, he grows:

It's not that he has become a True Believer overnight... He's not like Lily McCarty, the apple-cheeked 24-year-old PD in his division who hugs her clients and cries for their terrible upbringings. This job was her Plan A, a way to practice social work with a law license.

Charley's different. Yes, he fights for his clients' future. But with every trial, every argument, his own future feels at stake. In his mind, the options remain stark: Be somebody, or be nobody.

What's more, he realizes, he just hates losing. He takes it personally. He has had enough for a lifetime...

There is so much insight and attention to detail in this story, it's as if the reporter is giving away some of our secret not-so-noble motivations:

From the defense side, it's easy to despise what seems an air of privilege and hauteur around the opposing table. The young prosecutors believe God is on their side...

Or at least that's how it feels from across the room. It doesn't help that whereas PDs look like ordinary people, by and large, their state attorney counterparts are uncommonly good-looking, the kind that used to make classmates feel weird or fat or gangly. Beating the state becomes sweet on so many levels.

Some months back, in another courtroom, a young female prosecutor struck the PDs as particularly snooty and unreasonable. The PDs decided to teach her a lesson. They swamped her with depositions, besieged her with motions, double-teamed her at trial. They kept up the barrage until, one day in open court, she dissolved in wretched sobs. Point made. And even if it wasn't, it felt good to do it...

Dang. Read this remarkable article, and hope there'll be a Part 2.

Bonus links: this article is being discussed, here, here, here, and here. And on Fark, headlined "Terrible law student matures into terrible lawyer. Here is his story.", tons of comments:

"It's like teaching, social work or the clergy. It doesn't work if you're just doing it until something better comes along."

Update: Welcome visitors from ACS Blog! There are many more entertaining and interesting reactions to the article via Metafilter:

"PD is a tough job. The workload is almost always twice what any human can bear, so stuff goes undone. Yet the cause is noble as the defendants need an advocate as they negotiate their way through a legal system where the odds are stacked against them... I think a lot of the PDs fall into it like Charley, it is one of their last options, yet I still have a lot of respect for them and the good they do for society. For all that, society looks down on them, perceives them not as defenders of the downtrodden but shysters looking to allow criminals to escape justice. Go Charley."