I have never been able to prove that the Weinsteins are somehow paying their jailed clients to refer cases to them. My theory is that everyone with a hired lawyer wants to believe that he has the best lawyer in town, and everyone with an appointed lawyer wants the best lawyer in town.

I’m sure some of it has to do with the jailhouse lawyers. Clients that are incarcerated are always comparing their cases to someone else’s. So when Weinstein comes in and agrees with them just to get the client, then we have the problem.

This case illustrates why it’s not “stealing clients” but “stealing from clients” — the client was not an asset to me, but a liability. I don’t mind losing the client, but that doesn’t make the lawyer’s lies any less repugnant.

Jamie,

Good point. Because the vulnerable, incarcerated client wants to believe that the lawyer can get him out, there’s a lot the lawyer can say short of an actual promise that the client will interpret as a guarantee. For example, I wrote here about a firm (now defunct) that claimed a 99% chance of winning a case.

“99%” or “probably” is no less a lie than “guaranteed”. It’s impossible for the client to catch the lawyer in these weaselly lies, though, because the lawyer can always claim that this case turned out to be in the 1%.

I think all of us have heard from clients over the years all the variations of unreasonable promises made and outright lies told to clients; perhaps I should add, especially to those in jail.

I’ve always wondered what those conversations are like, you know the ones… the ‘coming clean’ conversations where the lawyer ‘explains’ that everything he said up until now was somewhere between 95 and 100% wrong.

Of course, since the CJA client could afford private counsel, it’s only right that he retain someone, and likely a product of Karma that he got the lawyer he deserved.