The starting point of Dershowitz ‘s argument is that there really are educated people in the United States who think lawyers should refuse to defend difficult highly unpopular clients. I think this is both true and a problem.
In any given instance involving Donald Trump, it may be impossible to disentangle whether a lawyer refused to take his case because of previous time commitments, lack of expertise in that area of the law, fear of non-payment/difficult client, or concern that friends and colleagues would look down on them for being DJT’s attorney. But I think that turning down a case due to the third (non-payment/difficult client) is nothing for the lawyer to be proud of, the fourth (unpopular client) is much worse, and Dershowitz is correct to make the best case he can for these being real American problems.
As for lawyers being disbarred, a very few should be, but care should be taken to avoid any association with whether a client, or legal issue, is unpopular. Looking at the 65 Project ethics complaint against Dershowitz, it’s more than plausible that they are specifically going after Trump election lawyers, rather than engaging in some general high-minded attempt to increase professional legal standards.
I am way over on the side of celebrating lawyers willing to take unpopular cases, whether it be election law or anything else. Lawyers should be willing to put up with bad clients, just as judges should be willing to put up with bad lawyers making weak cases. Except in the rarest incidences, the only remedy needed is for the bad lawyers to lose their cases (and, where provided by law, for the losing side to pay reasonable opposing counsel fees).
Lawyers have been known to do pro bono work, and I think are even kind of expected to. But, if a client is known to have access to enough money and yet also known to have a habit of stiffing lawyers, not getting paid is not an unreasonable concern. I guess the answer would be “I’ll represent you, for a $750K retainer, up front.” I would not be surprised if that is the pothole Individual-ONE keeps getting stuck in. Difficult clients are a completely different matter. If the client becomes a problem for the lawyer themself, I would think they could just resign the case, no?
Most of the cases are about lawyers actually lying to the bench. Is that even acceptable? Punishing lawyers for being dishonest and wasting valuable docket space with bullshit petitions seems fair enough, as they are thereby wasting money all of us ante up. There have been efforts at “tort reform”, meant to reduce frivolous activity, but that was also problematic as it seemed to lean toward enstraitening ordinary citizens but the wealthy and corporations not so much.
Dershowitz thinks people can be tortured if they might have information that could stop a terrorist attack. That’s the standard he declared, nothing like a reasonable suspicion, just that someone might have such information. I think Dershowitz might have information that could stop a terrorist attack. I hope action is taken soon.
Not about professional legal standards, but about lawyers attempting to subvert democracy via fraudulent and malicious legal actions. It wouldn’t be a coincidence if 99+% of their activity was directed towards Trump election lawyers.
This is true and it’s always been a problem. John Adams took a lot of heat for defending the British soldiers tried for the Boston Massacre.
It might not be something to be proud of, but at the same time turning down a client beause they have a reputation for nonpayment of services rendered is perfectly reasonable. If Trump is having a hard time finding an attorney to represent him it’s because of his past behavior. He made his bed and now he has to lie in it.
“… You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be provided for you …” If no lawyer will take his case because of his past behavior, obviously he is unable to pay enough for one, and the court would be required to provide a PD. I wonder if there is a standard of competence: if he could only manage to engage a small-town lawyer with no practical experience in this type of case, would the court say that he therefore can afford representation, quality thereof notwithstanding?
He can afford one, it’s his choice not to pay. Though I’d love to see him assigned a public defender. I’m sure said public defender will disagree with great vigor. Nobody knew vigor could be so great.
Plus a reputation for not keeping their damn mouth shut when it would better serve their case and double-plus somehow persuading their attorney into license-threatening behavior, like filing a motion without merit.
I think the general interpretation is that you have a right to effective counsel. I’ve always gotten the impression that you don’t get to make an argument for ineffective counsel until after a verdict has been rendered. i.e. If you get a guilty verdict, you’re going to have to argue that your lawyer’s actions were not up to reasonable standards and that the case would have proceeded differently had their actions been reasonable. But up front, I’m not sure a judge would appoint someone to who was clearly not qualified to defend Trump.
I’m still surprised, that out of the many thousands of lawyers in this country, there hasn’t been a single one who is 1) MAGA enough to want to defend Trump and 2) good enough to do a competent job of it.
That doesn’t seem to be the problem. He doesn’t pay his bills and he wants a lawyer to deny the facts in the face of overwhelming evidence. Plenty of lawyers can offer him a competent defense if he would pay the bill, but they’re not going to court with a bunch of nonsense conspiracy theories, and they don’t want to get caught up in another Trump criminal conspiracy.
I assume Rudy was too, back in the day. For all his faults, I believe he was still a competent attorney. I have no first hand knowledge of this, of course. But generally you’re pretty good if you get to be a US Attorney.
Yeah, probably. September 11th kind of broke him, like it broke Dennis Miller (and probably others). Plus, he’s pretty old now, so he could just be losing it.
FWIW, the redcoats passed a hat around and paid Adams when he agreed to represent them.
Not very much, of course, but they weren’t exactly wealthy landowner reality TV stars, either. Actually, I think they had to take extra jobs in their off hours to make ends meet as a general rule. They really weren’t paid very well so the expense was likely a considerable portion of their meager income.
“Six of the soldiers were acquitted; the other two were convicted of manslaughter and given reduced sentences. The two found guilty of manslaughter were sentenced to branding on their hand.”
Well, here’s a rare case where even the first-year PD would do a better, or at least more ethical, job.
But I would miss the shitshow of a Giuliani-esque lawyer making things much worse… so I hope Trump finds a barely-competent MAGA barrister, AND demands to take the stand so he can tell America what he really thinks!
Well, they didn’t cover this trial on Court TV, so for the nonce I’ll have to give Adams the benefit of the doubt that he believed in the innocence of those 6. That boy of his, JQ, he was one hell of a lawyer. He got those British authoritarian grave robbers to end the War of 1812 and pretend that they lost.