When OJ was on trial in 1995, he spent $6 million of his own money to hire a team of 10 defense attorneys.
Obviously, your average crime defendant can’t afford a team like this. But for those who can, is it generally more advantageous to hire multiple lawyers than just one? What does having multiple lawyers do for you that just one couldn’t? (Is it just that each specializes in one particular field?)
I think it’s a matter of different lawyers having different specialties.
For example, one might be good at framing the narrative for your defense. One might be really good at looking for holes in the prosecution’s case. Another might be really good at scouting out jurors. One might be good at cross-examining witnesses.
I remember reading that in Simpson’s case, he hired Alan Dershowitz for his defense team and Dershowitz’ primary role was to work on preparing for Simpson’s appeal if he was found guilty during the initial trial.
IANAL (but I do watch a lot of Legal Eagle on youtube that talks about about this kind of thing in a humorous way)
And I thought the point was it was the amount of paperwork and interviews involved in going to trial, if you can afford to pay a good lawyer to go through the mountains of discovery evidence and depositions that are involved you are more likely to come across stuff that can help you (like the Mark Furman racism allegations for example). Basically there is a ton of stuff you don’t see on the news or in fictional portrayal of trials, that takes a lot of work, and having a good lawyer do that can make a difference.
Pretty much. Some specialize in a field, some specialize in a skill, some specialize in being famous.
A trial is as big as you make it. If you have someone with comprehensive forensic expertise and there are matters of scientific fact that you can put in issue, like blood splatters, DNA, fibers, and so on, you can spend as much time as you need just attacking the evidentiary foundation for the other side’s case, exhibit by exhibit. So maybe you pay one firm just to spend two weeks grilling the state’s witnesses on every piece of information they’re trying to get into the record.
If you also have someone whose entire practice is about criminal procedure and constitutional law, you can make a huge deal out of every possible objection to every possible procedural issue that comes up during the trial. We’re filing a motion because this juror was improperly influenced by this, we’re filing a motion to exclude this evidence because that, we’re filing a motion for a mistrial because the district attorney said that, we’re arguing that this witness should not be allowed to testify about X, Y and Z.
If you also have someone who is brilliant at grandstanding and performing for the media and the jury, you can put on a show and tie everything together. They might not know a thing about the blood spatters, they might not have ever filed a motion in their life, but maybe their job is just to be likeable and put reasonable doubt in people’s heads.
Lots of lawyers are good at their jobs, but none of them are world class at all of these incredibly different facets. If you have the resources to do it, you can go all-in on all of them, which just isn’t possible without a team. You won’t win on every issue, but you discredit one racist cop, you cast significant doubt on a couple of exhibits, and you tell a good story, and you sneak out of there.
Thanks, great answer.
How does a non-legal person like OJ Simpson know who to hire in the first place? Does he have to hire a lawyer whose job it is just to tell him which other lawyers are good at Specialty X and Specialty Y?
Good lawyers know what they’re good at, and which lawyers are better at other things. If you’re a money-is-no-object defendant and tell lawyer A you want the best defense possible, they’ll know who else to call.
I’ll be the outlier: it’s a money grab.
A person facing life behind bars will do whatever they can to try to avoid it. If they have money, they throw it at the problem. And so naturally a bunch of high priced lawyers show up to take the case.
But there’s a risk, with too many lawyers, that you’ll have a disjointed trial strategy or be plagued by infighting. Lawyers (especially highly successful ones) can have big egos, and may clash on tactics.
That’s not to say that having more than one lawyer is always bad. If you have one person who is first chair, having a second attorney who takes notes, pulls documents/case law, or offers a second opinion can be useful. But if you have more than that, all you’re doing is crowding the defense table.
If you are rich and at trial, a better use of money is to hire high priced expert witnesses to testify on your behalf. Some scientist who will question the DNA analysis, or the ballistics findings, for example, is infinitely more valuable to a defendant than a 4th lawyer who is renowned for his rhetorical flourishes.
This strikes me as a great example of a lawyer just collecting money for nothing.
An appeal is always based on a written record of the trial, and the lawyer who is responsible for giving the objections is the lawyer trying the case, so he’d have absolutely nothing to do until the case was over, when (if he was the appellate lawyer) he’d read the transcripts. I can’t imagine what an appellate lawyer would be doing to “prepare the appeal” before trial, other than to occasionally write down when the trial attorney argued that the judge had made a mistake.
IANAL but I think there are higher levels that can go into an appeal than what you’ve described.
A lawyer who specializes in appeals will be laying the groundwork for the appeal during the initial trial. He’ll be making sure that the other lawyers raise certain issues during the trial that will form the basis for an appeal. He’ll make sure that the evidence and witnesses that will be needed in the appeal are introduced in the initial trial.
Having a separate lawyer focused on just this (if you can afford it) means that the other lawyers can keep their focus on the trial that’s currently going on.
I’m sure that is a large part of it. I think of it as the Adam Sandler method of practicing law. If you have someone with lots of money as a client why not give bit parts to all your buddies. The most egregious examples I see in Australia are the occasional drug trials, financed by money that the clients will have seized after their futile but very, very costly appeals are exhausted.
Not if the “appellate” lawyer is constantly telling them to do something for the record on appeal.
I’m going to assume most people spending millions on their legal defense aren’t going to hire Homer Simpson as their lawyer. For that kind of money, you’re going to get competent lawyers.
That’s not what I’m getting at. When you’re running a trial, you have a clear strategy, and you konw what questions you’re going to ask your witnesses, and you know what docs you’re going to introduce. It’s extremely focussd.
If there’s some other lawyer on the team, whose sole job is to tug on your robe and say, “Be sure to object to this question on the record for the appeal”, you’re quickly going to lose that focus. The last thing I want when I’m running a case is to have some one slipping me notes, or telling me to raise a particular objection, or to be sure to ask a certain question, “for the appeal”. You can’t run a trial like that.
Maybe the priciest of lawyers are pricey in part because they can and will do just that effectively?
I’ve been involved in multi-lawyer cases. They only worked well where there was an overall coordination, agreed to in advance.
You can’t be certain it’s the lawyers driving the overspend, though. I’ve been involved in at least four cases where the client complained to me that I wasn’t spending enough and that they had a big budget and wanted me to do more with it, etc. Now, in three of those cases I talked the client down somewhat and convinced them we had all the resources we needed and that we weren’t going to get any better result by spending more on unnecessary lawyers and third opinions etc. But in one case they sacked me because they were convinced I couldn’t be trying hard enough if I wasn’t spending their money like a drunken sailor. And in the other three cases it was hard work talking them down and if the circumstances had been slightly different they might have insisted I somehow figure out a way to waste their money.
It’s all well outside my experience. But it doesn’t have to be like that that, does it? It could be some other lawyer who just puts suggestions forward, for your preparation. If they had their eyes on the appeal and made suggestions (well before you are actually in court) pointing out areas that might found grounds for an appeal, I could see that working.
As I said, I am not a lawyer. But my understanding is that sometimes an appeal will be denied because the appellate judge will rule that the appellant is trying to introduce some new issue into the case and that it should have been raised in the initial trial.
That would be an error in how the trial was run in the first place, not an error in failing to spot a ground for appeal.
Well, yes, that’s my point.
Spotting the grounds for appeal after the trail is over doesn’t always work. Sometimes you need to spot the grounds for appeal while the trial is still in progress.
As I said, you’re not going to hire an idiot for this job. You’re going to want to hire a competent lawyer who’s capable of communicating with the rest of the legal team in a way that doesn’t interfere with them doing their own jobs.
Roger King (whose production company syndicated shows like Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune) who was a sometimes-golf partner of OJ was so shocked that OJ’s first lawyer, Howard Weitzman (who had gotten OJ out of an earlier abuse case), had let OJ be questioned by the police that he cold-called OJ, told him to fire Weitzman and hire Robert Shapiro, whom King had never even met before. OJ fired Weitzman and hired Shapiro by the next day.
Basically, King thought Shapiro was smart (even though he didn’t know him) and since OJ thought King was smart (though they barely knew each other), he listened and hired Shapiro.
That might sound like a fucked up way to hire a lawyer when your life literally depends on it, but, well, the entire OJ story is fucked up.
You miss my point. What you are talking about isn’t a task for someone appointed to start considering an appeal. What you are talking about is someone whose task is to second-guess the trial attorney during the trial. Raising all the viable issues is what the trial attorney does.
In other words, in this example you aren’t talking about someone who specialises in fixing motor vehicle crash damage. You are talking about appointing someone to watch that the driver doesn’t crash.