Attorney-client relationships

* The other day I met with a client who was extremely frustrated and pissed off: at the world, at the system, at me, at the railroad job of the former offer of two months transmuting into nine months, just for getting another drug charge and a bail jumping charge (strenuously denied in the teeth of the court minutes).

In our previous discussions, my client had been on the outs and in civilian clothes. This time in jail orange, I saw something I hadn't noticed before. Inked on the right side of my client's neck were the words

TRUST
NO
ONE

* Today in attorney visiting I finally got to see an actual issue of the "Presumed Innocent" publication that's been going around the jails. My client brought it to our meeting. Rather than a newspaper, it's a glossy magazine with lawyer ads (out-of county ones) and pages labeled "Bails and Bonds," "Legal Research," "So You Want to Generate Conflict with Your Court-Appointed Lawyer?" and so on (okay, so I didn't see that last page, I inferred it). I was dying to leaf through my client's magazine, but I had to stay on task and review discovery. Instead of getting my own copy, I got a long list of cases and statutes to copy off for my client. I left the lock-up with a new confidence-building task of sorts, and a new appreciation of "Presumed Innocent" magazine's target audience.