Defending People

the tao of criminal-defense trial lawyering

Outsource Your Marketing: David Draper Edition

Detroit lawyer David Draper should not be rep­re­sent­ing crim­i­nal defendants.

Draper left this com­ment on this post:

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I agree with these guest posts you really don’t get any­thing expect for me con­tent you don’t agree with or matches up with your site.”

One of a criminal-defense lawyer’s core com­pe­ten­cies is the abil­ity to string together a series of let­ters into what we in the busi­ness call “words,” and then to string those words together into “sen­tences” with what is known as “mean­ing.” (It is help­ful also to be able to string those sen­tences together into para­graphs, but that’s the advanced course.)

Writ­ing a mean­ing­ful sen­tence is a mat­ter of a) hav­ing an idea; and b) con­vert­ing that idea to writ­ten words in a way that the reader gets a close approx­i­ma­tion of the idea. Con­vert­ing ideas to writ­ten words is much the same as trans­lat­ing them to spo­ken words, except it’s eas­ier because the writer has more oppor­tu­ni­ties than the speaker to edit. 

You can see why get­ting ideas and con­vert­ing them to words might be impor­tant to pro­fes­sion­als whose job is advo­cat­ing for clients’ free­dom. If the criminal-defense lawyer has no idea, she’s a gelati­nous cube. If she has an idea but can’t trans­late it to words, she might as well have no idea. In the crim­i­nal cour­t­house, pan­tomime alone sel­dom car­ries the day. 

[Y]ou really don’t get any­thing expect for me con­tent you don’t agree with of matches up with your site”? Other than “except” for “expect,” which could be mere dyslexia, and excus­able, I don’t know where to begin trans­lat­ing this.

Most of us start con­vert­ing ideas to words at about age one, and prac­tice every day from then on. There are lots of lawyers who don’t write well, but any­one who can’t form an intel­li­gi­ble sen­tence has no busi­ness rep­re­sent­ing human beings whose free­dom is on the line.

So, judg­ing from his com­ment, David Draper should find other work.

Draper prob­a­bly paid some­one to leave that com­ment for him under his name; he’s still respon­si­ble for it. And the lack of judg­ment he has dis­played by allow­ing some­one to post unin­tel­li­gi­ble com­ment spam under his name ren­ders him equally unfit to have human beings’ free­dom in his hands.

(How’s the out­sourc­ing work­ing out for you, David? I’ll offer you The Pope­hat Deal: apol­o­gize for the com­ment spam and pro­vide emails or other doc­u­men­ta­tion iden­ti­fy­ing the mar­ke­teer he hired who pro­duced the com­ment spam and prov­ing their respon­si­bil­ity for this, and I’ll change your name in this post. “Because lawyers who hire bad mar­ke­teers have bad judg­ment, but bad mar­ke­teers are ver­min, and ought to be stomped.”)

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About The Author

Mark Bennett got his letter of marque from the Supreme Court of Texas in May 1995. He is famous for having no sense of humor when it comes to totalitarianism.

Comments

3 Responses to “Outsource Your Marketing: David Draper Edition”

  1. Mimi Smith says:

    No, no, no: this one is most likely from the ascribed Draper. Had a staff mem­ber writ­ten the com­ment, the staff mem­ber would have taken care. No, this one smacks of haste, if not Ambien.

  2. Mimi Smith says:

    On another note, could I have your per­mis­sion to use your bit­ing and pithy cri­tique, in my own responses to offense reports? I loved the critique.

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