Sui Generis can't handle the truth
I'm a rejected law school applicant. It should come as no surprise that I have spent a lot of time over the past several months thinking about whether or not legal practice would be a good career fit for me. I still don't know. But blogs have been a good source of information and provide good food for thought while I try to decide what I really want to do.
There's a great mix of opinions about law school and legal practice out there. Some love it, some see the good and bad, and some really hate it. Towards the end of one of her characteristically long and passionate posts, Jojo seizes on an important aspect of the law that many people don't seem to consider:
I remember watching TV or reading books about crimes and thinking that I could Never defend a person who I knew was guilty. I still feel this way. However, it never becomes an issue, because I never know the truth.Ignorance of the facts may make you a better lawyer since you can advocate for your client with a clean conscience, but wouldn't it just drive you crazy? Wouldn't it keep you up at night? How can you go through life without always wondering if you unintentionally aided a horrible criminal, or convicted an innocent person? Apparently, some people can. I don't know that I could.
Categories: law school, work
3 comments:
Maybe part of what motivates defense attorneys is that the attorney is there to perpetuate our legal system where every defendant is entitled to a fair and impartial trial and the presumption of innocence. Even if a defense attorney knew "the truth" (which I think would rarely be the case, at least not the whole truth - even the plaintiffs rarely tell their attorneys the whole truth), it's our legal system that protects defendants from overzealous prosecutors, media by trial (well...maybe not, haha), and summary execution.
Then again, I've only done civil work, so what do I know? :)
you can always do personal injury! all you're really doing then is squeezing the cash out of the big evil insurance companies, so even when our clients are complete and utter fucknuts (most of the time) i don't feel guilty about working for them even when i don't think they deserve to sue. cause really, it's insurance companies. i can't quite bring myself to feel sorry for them.
When I had jury duty this year, I realized that nobody in the room when the alleged crime was committed knew what really happened. They all had different interpretations. So there's no way the lawyers could know the whole truth, and we certainly didn't know it. We just had to listen to everyone's story and do our best to tease out a plausible version of the truth.
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