6. What skills are needed to practice in the area of criminal defense?
Any attorney who tries criminal cases needs to have street sense. You also need life experience, you must be logical and you must be able to think on your feet. You must know what to jump on and what to stay away from. That becomes second nature when you are in the criminal arena because it’s one thing to learn what questions to ask but another thing to learn what questions you should not ask.
In addition, you need to get to know the judges - who to stay away from and which judges will give you leeway. You must get to know the cops and learn which cops whose buttons you can push and which are truthful or not truthful by nature. You also must learn which district attorneys are lazy and which aren’t, who you can push around and who you should treat with respect.
7. What kind of hours do you work? Do you have a good work/life balance?
I work 70 to 80 hours a week. I’ve been doing that forever. It is not unusual for me to work until 8:00 or 9:00 at night. If I’m in trial (I just finished a 3-week death penalty case) I’ll rarely get out of office before 9:30 or 10:00 p.m. After the court day is over, I still need to go through correspondence, return phone calls and work on other cases.
8. How can a new attorney break into this field?
There are a couple of different routes for getting into criminal defense:
1. Start out as a district attorney or public defender.
2. Open a private practice and take court appointments. No one has a big private criminal practice overnight. In private practice you must take a lot of court appointments. That’s how judges get to know you, clients refer other clients to you and you get to know the territory. By being in court and trying cases, you can hook up with other attorneys looking for associates and lots of work will spill over to you.
3. Join an established criminal defense firm. Criminal defense law firms may have lots of ready work for new attorneys. Criminal defense firms aren’t as interested in law school grades as much as whether you can do a lot of hard work and put in long hours. These firms look for lawyers who aren’t afraid to be aggressive but yet don’t put people off. You don’t want to be considered a jerk because if people don’t like you they will take it out on your client.
8. What are the latest trends in criminal law?
Criminal trials are down across the country. Smaller counties in Pennsylvania may only see one or two criminal trials a year.
I used to try a lot more criminal cases than I do now. The main reason is the change in sentencing guidelines. Over the years courts have gone from no sentencing guidelines to lenient sentencing guidelines to very stringent sentencing guidelines. Almost every time sentencing guidelines are adjusted they are adjusted upwards.
Now with mandatory sentences and high sentencing guidelines, it’s a zero sum game if you go to trial. You can lose even with a good defense. Your client could end up of serving several years in prison versus home detention and a couple of years on probation.
You must discuss the pros and cons with the client. You can’t guarantee a win. When a deal is on the table, most often the client takes the deal.
