Defending People

the tao of criminal-defense trial lawyering

Narcissists Who Need Narcissists…

HOUSTON, TX — Criminal-defense lawyer Mark Ben­nett has recently announced his inten­tion to take on rep­re­sen­ta­tion of all rich peo­ple charged with crimes in the state of Texas, effec­tive imme­di­ately. Rec­og­niz­ing that the filthy rich often face an unfair bias in the court­room, Ben­nett, a Hous­ton, Texas lawyer, seeks to acquit any and all rich peo­ple wrong­fully charged with seri­ous crimes.

No, not really.

It might be nice to cor­ner the mar­ket on wrong­fully accused fat cats, and even if such a press release didn’t net me a sin­gle addi­tional afflu­ent per­son (why would it?), non-rich clients like to imag­ine that rich peo­ple get bet­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tion, so I might get more clients of aver­age means. But I wouldn’t do it because issu­ing a press release like that would sub­ject me to well-deserved ridicule* as a nar­cis­sis­tic asshat.

Kinda like Gary Ostrow.

Does any­one believe that issu­ing a press release announc­ing that he “has firmly stated that he will take on any celebrity crim­i­nal case, regard­less of the sever­ity of the accu­sa­tion” and that he “is con­fi­dent that his unpar­al­leled expe­ri­ence and court­room savvy can help defend the rights and free­dom of high-profile stars” will actu­ally get him more celebrity crim­i­nal cases? Does Ostrow? I doubt it. Celebri­ties gen­er­ally choose the lawyers their agents or man­agers rec­om­mend, and agents and man­agers, while they often choose unwisely, aren’t likely to choose a lawyer based on a self-serving press release.

Ostrow knows, though, that there is a spe­cial class of poten­tial clients who want to believe their cases are high-profile, because they want them to be high-profile. These poten­tial clients want to be celebri­ties, because they believe that celebri­ties get the best of everything. 

We call these poten­tial clients “narcissists.” 

File Ostrow’s bid to get more clients under “affin­ity marketing.”

(Apro­pos of celebrity:

)

*While I’m not averse to sub­ject­ing myself to ridicule—it’s good for my ego—I try to avoid deserv­ing it.

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This entry was posted by on Friday, January 4th, 2013 at 12:18 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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

7 Responses to “Narcissists Who Need Narcissists…”

  1. Turk says:
    4 January 2013 at 12:30 pm

    Whichever mar­ke­teer wrote that dread­ful copy should be fired. And so should any­one else that approved it.

    Reply
  2. Rich Lawrence says:
    4 January 2013 at 1:11 pm

    Unfor­tu­nately Mr. Ostrow is the norm here in Broward County.

    A brief his­tory from the local blog: http://jaablog.jaablaw.com/categories/263/ostrow.aspx

    Also, he was dumb enough to walk through air­port secu­rity car­ry­ing cocaine:

    http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pulp/2008/05/ostrow_speaks_about_airport_co.php

    He is not shall we say, the bright­est light on the circuit.

    Reply
    • Mark Bennett says:
      4 January 2013 at 2:07 pm

      Fas­ci­nat­ing. What’s the story behind that blog?

      Reply
      • Rich Lawrence says:
        4 January 2013 at 9:49 pm

        I think it was started by a local defense attor­ney who felt that the Broward State Attorney’s Office was unusu­ally harsh on petty crim­i­nals and def­er­en­tial towards afflu­ent defendants.

        Drug residue cases are pushed to the max where mostly poor, minor­ity defen­dants are involved. Con­versely, the Fort Laud­erdale Police Chiefs wife got a few months of insti­tu­tion­al­ized care after pop­ping off sev­eral hand­gun rounds at him. Most nor­mal cit­i­zens would be doing hard time for attempted murder.

        Repeat sim­i­lar sce­nar­ios for 5 or 6 years and you have the gist of it. It’s been rel­a­tively quiet lately, I think because the author & his wife have a new baby.

        I have seen him called out by other attor­neys as cru­ci­fy­ing some judges while seem­ing to miss the but of oth­ers and also for wast­ing time post­ing instead of work­ing client cases.

        My fas­ci­na­tion has been with the vit­riol and juve­nile behav­ior that comes with anony­mous com­ment­ing, even from attor­neys, pros­e­cu­tors and maybe even some of the judges them­selves. In addi­tion, the lack of pro­fes­sion­al­ism dis­played by the judi­ciary, in var­i­ous forms, is dis­played in a man­ner that keeps me com­ing back in utter dis­be­lief (see Ana Gar­diner, Larry Korb & Larry Sei­dlin, et al).

        Reply
  3. Jordan Rushie says:
    4 January 2013 at 1:58 pm

    Those same clients: “if you take my case pro bono it’s gonna be all over the news. It’s gonna make you rich! You’ll be more famous than Jose Baez or Scott Greenfield!”

    Reply
  4. Robb Fickman says:
    4 January 2013 at 8:33 pm

    This is the kind of lawyer that makes me want to punch lawyers in the mouth. Let him stay in Florida. Ass­hat Esquire.

    Robb Fick­man

    Reply

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