Monday Musings: Woman Of The Law

INTRODUCTION

Hi! I’m Woman of the Law. I’ve been a public defender for about a year and a half. I’m a single female in my 20s, living in a city, and despite the fact that I appear to be going down the path of cat lady spinsterhood, I’m having a good time. When listing all of the things I’d do if I won the lottery, “quit my job” is not one of them. I love what I do, even when I don’t like it so much.

Your blog is a mixture of heartfelt job-related stories and heartfelt, sometimes even heart-wrenching glimpses into your personal life. Do you find that particular things push you to write?

Angst, generally, is what pushes me to write. Confusion, helplessness, bewilderment, frustration, anger, sadness. I find that sometimes the only way to rein in it and recover is to write about it. Writing forces you to describe symptoms, which makes it better to identify the problem, and the solution or the path becomes more clear. I enjoy blogging because I like hearing other people say, Yeah, I know that. My favorite writer is Scheherazade at Stay of Execution. She’s switched her writing genre on her blog, and I miss her old posts. I thought she did a great job of describing people, feelings, struggles - in general, what it means to be one human being among many. Her writing gave me insight into my own life, and that’s what makes her such a powerful writer.

But I also really enjoy writing to entertain. Just a few days ago, a friend suggested that I become a writer because I always have a good story. I think that’s true. Life is much more fun through storytelling.

When I write about work, I sometimes write about law in the abstract because I have a love for The Law, in the abstract. Occasionally I write about the difficult decisions I have to make in a day. Other times, when I write about clients, I want to write to tell the world that these people are people, just like you and I. People are more than the worst things they’ve done, and all too often criminal defendants, whether guilty or innocent, are merely regarded through that lens. The world deserves to know the rest of the story.

While you were still in law school you made it clear you wanted to be a public defender. What drew you to the job?

Before law school, I worked as a social worker, investigating allegations of child abuse and neglect. I often worked with law enforcement and with attorneys. I was frustrated with how ineffectual I felt I was, as a child protection worker. I couldn’t help families in crisis unless it was already past the point where the state needed to intervene, and in cases where I really felt the state should intervene the courts didn’t always agree. I felt so strongly about protecting children that I decided I’d rather be an attorney, like the ones I saw in court.

Initially, I wanted to become a DA to prosecute child abuse cases, figuring that if more child abuse cases were prosecuted, as they should be, the cycle of abuse would be broken. I also wanted to prosecute crime with the intention of making sure people who needed help for addiction, mental illness, and basic human needs got it.

By the end of my first year of law school, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to be a DA or a PD. The turning point came when I went to speak with a professor who did capital trial defense. I expressed my interest in capital trial defense work because I am staunchly anti-death penalty. She knew my background in child protection and asked me why I thought I wanted to be a DA. I told her that I watched as my kids got hurt all the time, and no one cared, and no one was held accountable, and I wanted to prosecute those people because they are the ones who hurt my kids. I’ll never forget that she looked at me straight in the eye, and not unkindly said to me, “These clients that we defend - they were your kids once. And this is where they ended up. This is what the system did for them.”

I almost fell out of my chair. I had never really thought of it like that. I still wasn’t 100% sure that I wanted to be a PD at that point, so I signed up for 3 internships: one with the death penalty clinic, one with the PD’s office, and one with the DA’s office. I did them in that order. I was maybe two weeks into my internship with the PD’s office, where I was exclusively representing incarcerated juveniles during my second summer. I started the summer thinking that maybe I really did still want to be a DA. I swore I would never, ever, ever prosecute juveniles (still thinking, in my naïveté, that I would have had a choice in the matter) so I didn’t feel conflicted about defending them. It was heart-wrenching, seeing such small people in prison. It broke my heart. Anyway, two weeks into my summer, I took a week off to watch part of the death penalty case I had worked on the previous spring. By the end of the first day of testimony, I swore I’d never be anything but a public defender. Just watching the proceedings for one day was enough to convince me that I could never be a prosecutor. And that was the end of that. I never looked back. I returned to my PD internship and finished out my 12 weeks but it didn’t take that long for me to become a militant defender. That summer was the critical turning point. Even if I had not attended the capital proceedings, I don’t think there would have been any way I could have finished out my PD internship with the kids and still have wanted to be a prosecutor. The blatant racism, the way communities of color were treated by law enforcement, the overwhelming incarceration of youth - it was too much. That summer was a great summer because I felt emboldened. I was young, I was idealistic, I was angry, and I was ready to fight the good fight.

I had to go on and work for a DA’s office full time after that, at the beginning of my third year. I wouldn’t do bail arguments because I refused to send anyone to jail, so I stayed in the office and wrote memos and briefs in response to defense motions. The people for whom I worked were decent and reasonable individuals, and I respected them. They were good to me even after my secret identity as a wannabe PD came out. My supervisor there was happy to be a reference for me, and he said something to the effect of, even if you are on the other side, what’s important is that you’re doing this type of work, because no matter what side you’re on, it’s a higher calling than many other fields of law. I couldn’t help feeling like a traitor though, especially since I started interviewing with PD offices that semester. It was a good way to learn substantive criminal law in that area, but I was also itching to get into a defender office and finishing out that internship was a bit agonizing for me in that sense.

Your most recent post mentions subjects you’ve started to write about, only to abandon them halfway through. One of the subjects is why you became an attorney. So why did you become an attorney, and how has it compared with your expectations?

I think I covered the “why I became an attorney” question. As far as expectations, I don’t think anything can quite prepare you for day to day practice, other than actual day to day practice. Two things were a big wake-up call: first, my day to day work uses significantly less law than I thought it would. I don’t do as much litigating as I thought I would, or would like to be doing. I spend a remarkable amount of time bargaining, or outright begging. It can be incredibly tiring, just begging DAs that you may respect, like, dislike, or outright despise. I wish I used law more often as a sword, instead of a shield, or at all. Second, my clients have a lot more dislike and distrust toward me than I expected.

Another subject you mention is how you enjoy your personal time. Can you describe a “typical” week in your life, including job and not-the-job moments?

I wake up at 6:15 and go to the gym. From the gym I go to work, drink my coffee and eat my granola bar at my desk while reading various newspapers online. I check my voicemail, my email, try to return them if I can, and then pack my briefcase for court. Around 9:30 or 10, I head over to court. I spend the remaining hours of the day waiting for cases to get called and for clients to show up. All of the waiting around is, by far, the most inefficient and maddening part of my typical day. I would estimate that on average, I spend one hour waiting for every 30-second calendar call I have with a client. Unfortunately, I also have to be in half a dozen different courtrooms in a day, so sometimes I have clients waiting all day just for me to show up. I hate that.

I have lunch in my office with coworkers, and after lunch, if I haven’t finished my cases, then it’s back to court. If I HAVE managed to finish my court cases for the day, then I spend time prepping an upcoming trial, or doing an investigation, or writing a motion. I don’t do that type of work on many of my cases. I have to triage which cases look like they really will not be resolved and use my time to work on those cases. Sometimes I don’t really start digging in to a case until a trial date is actually scheduled. I won’t ever go into a trial unprepared, but I don’t prep all my cases as though they were going to trial from Day 1. Because almost all of them will not go to trial. I enjoy writing motions but don’t get to do it as often as I thought I would.

The work day ends at 5 p.m., technically, but most people are there until at least 6 or 6:30, since most of the 9-5 workday is spent sitting in court, and there are always people working even later than that. On average, I have at least one night a week that I’m at work until 8 or 9. I do also bring work home on occasion, but I prefer to keep work in the office if possible. I also go into work at least one weekend a month, often two. [Note to clients: We do not get paid overtime. I make the same amount of money whether I leave at 4:30 p.m. or 9 p.m. - so the only reason that we work late is because we do, in fact, care very deeply about your cases.]

Two or three nights a week I go straight home after work, immediately strip off the work clothes and get into sweatpants and a t-shirt, and eat dinner while watching the Food Network (this is a new and inexplicable addiction.) I check my favorite internet sites, watch another hour or two of primetime TV, and I’m in bed by 10:30 most nights. (Totally lame, I know.)

One or two nights a week, I go out after work, usually with coworkers. Public defenders know how to party, let me tell you. And of course, while we drink, we mostly talk about work. You just can’t shake it off. Sometimes I get to hang out with my non-PD friends, but they’re lawyers at mega corporate law firms, so it’s hard to pin them down during the week.

If I’m not at the bar or watching TV, I’m still in the process of going through a volunteer orientation to work with children at a nearby hospital. I spend at least three weekend days out of a month doing serious window shopping (because I am too poor to do that much actual shopping). I am also doing some work assisting two death penalty attorneys on a habeas case out of Alabama. I like to read and am psyched that a friend of mine recently started a book club, which I’m loving. I LOVE baseball, and I think one of the coolest ways to take in a baseball game is by listening to it on the radio. I play kickball in a legitimate kickball league. And I think I may be joining Team in Training with some people I met recently.

And, of course, there’s the guy in the bar who told you his feelings about vaginas. Please tell: how do you meet these guys, and what did this one have to say on the subject of vaginas?

I actually have a very sad, pathetic dating life. I go on cycles, where I’ll get back out and do a lot of dating, and then my dating escapades fail miserably, so I stop dating for a few months. Lather, rinse, repeat.

I was at a bar with some friends. We had surveyed the scene and, finding nothing, were content to sit in our corner and judge other people. One guy in particular drew our ire. He was wearing a bad black leather jacket, he had a semi fauxhawk, and a light scraggly mustache. Kind of skeevy looking. (I called him Squiggy). At one point I went over to the jukebox, because I consider myself a fabulous jukebox song selector, and quite unfortunately Squiggy was right there in front of it. And boy, he reeeeeked of Old Spice or something. I politely asked if I could get to the jukebox, and he took this as an invitation to start chatting. I’d had a boring couple of months, hadn’t really done much or collected any entertaining stories, so I didn’t cut him off. I was looking through the jukebox and nodded, murmured, said things like “Really?” and “Wow.” He kept talking.

One of the first things he asked was, “Who are you here with?” I raised my eyebrows and said, “Why do you ask?” Well, he was just wondering if I was there with my boyfriend or something. I didn’t answer. He then dove into his story. He was just getting out of a serious relationship. He was with her for 5 months. (He was getting agitated at this point. Clearly it was a recent hurt). He LOVED going down on her. Loved it. Did it all the time. He absolutely worshipped her vagina. He started getting almost uncomfortably graphic - (I was alarmed. Really? We’re already there? We’ve been talking for 30 seconds and why in the world is he disclosing this information to me?) But she broke up with him because he didn’t worship her vagina enough, she said. How could she say that? He totally worshipped her vagina. But you know, she’s Indian. (Not sure how this is relevant).

The rest of the conversation was equally as mortifying. He had been with a group of friends earlier in the day, but some of them left because ‘you know, when you’ve had a few drinks and start talking politics when there’s a black guy in the room’ apparently this is a dealbreaker. So the black guy and his girlfriend and friend left early on. He then transitioned into, “Well, I’m not CURRENTLY employed” but he’s looking for work. He asked what I thought of his hair and I said, “Yeah, I noticed that.” He said he went ahead and did it because he wasn’t allowed to have it when he worked at Starbucks, but he was looking for landscaping work, which meant he’d be able to keep the fauxhawk hairdo because he’d “just be working with a bunch of Mexicans anyway.” I could not believe the words coming out of his mouth. But I remained polite.

I went back to my friends and as we were getting ready to leave, Squiggy’s friend (who seemed remarkably normal and was celebrating a birthday) came over and begged me to say goodbye to Squiggy on my way out. It would make his night, he said. So I did. I went over, gave him a hug, said thanks, nice meeting you, etc etc. He asked, “You want to hang out again sometime?” I shook my head no. “You want my phone number?” “No, thanks,” I said. “Do you want to take my phone number?” “Uh, no. Have a good night.” After saying goodbye to Squiggy, I went to give his friend a hug but it turned into a weird kiss on the cheek move but landed square on his lips. That’s right, right in front of Squiggy I had this extremely awkward and mistaken kiss on the lips with his friend. Oh, mercy. I felt bad, I didn’t intend to do that, and I certainly didn’t want to make Squiggy feel like an ass. I had hoped that our extensive conversation maybe made him feel better about getting back into the dating world after his breakup. I booked it out of there as quick as my legs could take me.

THE PD STUFF FIVE QUESTIONS

If you weren’t an attorney, what other job would you like to try and why?

I’d most likely be in a similar advocate position. I’d either still be in social work, or I’d be an educator at a school for at-risk youth, or I’d be working doing street outreach to homeless youth, or I’d be working for a non-profit regarding issues on crime, poverty, education, etc. I like working with people and for people.

Best moment on the job?

There are different types of best moments. I have had a few moments that I would characterize as “best.” Like, when another attorney or a judge tells you they’re impressed with your work, or you win a case because you’re a badass. Those are two different types of good moments. I guess the most recent one would be a phone call I got some time ago. I recently transferred divisions so all of my cases were transferred to other attorneys in my old division. One case had been dragging on for over a year, and on for trial for at least 6 months. The client and I clashed a lot at first - for the first few months, I got nothing but attitude and “Why haven’t you gotten this dismissed?” from this client. It was remarkably unpleasant. I even considered asking my supervisor to just transfer the case, because it was certainly going to trial, and it was clear that my client disliked me and truly felt like I was not a good advocate. A few months into our attorney-client relationship, we had a breakthrough and really started getting along. We stopped battling each other. About a month after my transfer, the client somehow tracked me down to my new office to talk to me about a new development on the case. The client had already met the new attorney, but the fact that the client hunted me down to discuss it with me really made me feel like I had been a good advocate for that client.

I’ve had other moments like those, but I’ll write about those another day. I think the best part of the job is developing a positive relationship with my clients, to fight alongside them instead of WITH them. “Winning” isn’t always the best part (but it does feel pretty good.) I often find that when I win, I just feel relieved. Then it’s on to tackle the next tough case.

Worst moment on the job?

I have to pick just one? Like “best” moments, there are different types of “worst” moments. There have been a couple of times that I’ve cross-examined the crap out of a cop, desperately trying to avoid a conviction for clients who will then be deported or will have to register as a sex offender, and afterwards the clients and the clients’ family thanked the police officer. I was ready to throw my file in the road.

I think a lot of frustration in my job comes from when clients hate me. Recently, a client of one of my coworkers was in front of a judge with no attorney and was about to severely incriminate himself. The judge asked me to stand up, so I hopped up there before the client could do any more damage. The client then immediately began berating me, saying “You can’t represent me, you don’t even know me, you couldn’t have even talked to me before getting up here in front of the judge, you’re not even a real attorney,” and so on. If at the end of the day I start telling people that maybe I should be a chef or a secretary (which I have said) it’s usually because I’ve been cursed out and blamed by more than a few clients that day. Those are the worst moments because they make you question why you keep fighting for someone to just constantly berate you (in addition to the judges, DAs, court officers who may berate you daily).

I’ve had a few clients die, naturally and by their own hand. Those are bad days.

If Heaven exists, what do you think God will say to you when you arrive?

I would like God to tell me that I did what I was here to do, and that I did His work well. I truly believe that as human beings we are all connected, and the purpose of our lives is to never take more than we give, in a global sense. Energy, whether emotional or physical, is neither created nor destroyed. I hope that when my work here is done, I will have given all I had to give to humanity.

If you could only pick one, who is your hero/heroine?

You’re so bossy with this “pick one” rule. I often find that my heroes are everyday people, and they tend to be women. I admire Princess Di and Jackie O and Mother Teresa because they were quiet leaders in their own way. I admire Hillary Clinton for not being afraid to be a strong and smart public presence. I admire the judge who sits in my jurisdiction who always sincerely addresses my clients by name, speaks to them directly and sincerely as human beings, and always kindly greets family members who have come with them to court. I idolize a friend of mine with whom I worked in college and have been friends with ever since, because she is kind, virtuous, hard-working, sincere, and super cool. But since you’re forcing me to pick one, I have to pick Mom. She’s a single mom who raised three kids while putting herself through school, and managed to get all three of us through school as well. I still can’t believe she was able to accomplish all that she did. Many people would not have been so successful.

I think PD Stuff needs a Sixth Question, which would be: If you had to pick one song as your theme song, what would it be? That’s a hard but essential question everyone should have to reckon with once in their lives.

Thank you very much, WOTL, for taking this on and sharing your thoughts, experiences and insights with us.

Join us next week, when the Monday Musings guest will be Scott Henson of Grits for Breakfast. Scott is “a former journalist turned opposition researcher/political consultant, public policy researcher and blogger.” His insights into the issues affecting criminal defendants, and really everybody, in Texas have become a must-read for everybody interested in jail, prison, immigration and other policies and the people behind them. If you have questions you’d like me to consider for Scott’s interview, please email them to me.

And remember, to schedule your own Monday Musings interview, just drop me a note.

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