When my office relocated recently and I announced the new contact information in the San Francisco legal newspaper, I included a note that reduced some of the legal wars in which I was General Sheridan for our side to a few sentences. Here they are:
FOXGLOVE, the poison-murder conspiracy case. A 10-year effort where Mr. Sheridan forced the former DA to dismiss a million-dollar prosecution after cross-examination revealed no poison, hence no murder, then repeated the success after the DA broke his plea agreement to dismiss all remaining counts.
GOLDEN DRAGON MASSACRE, the Chinatown mass murder case. After adverse publicity forced two changes of venue, Mr. Sheridan hung the jury in Santa Barbara.
SIXTY-ONE child sexual molestation felony counts, where a father turned down a plea to one count for straight probation, on grounds of innocence. Mr. Sheridan hung the jury and then negotiated the dismissal of all counts, beating a no-jail offer.
DEVIL'S SLIDE, where a young man survived a leap off the San Mateo cliff after a fight with his girlfriend. Twice the DA filed attempted murder, and twice Mr. Sheridan had the life-in-prison charge dismissed, first on the evidence and later on the law.
OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE, FALSE STATEMENTS, in U.S. District Court. Mr. Sheridan hung the jury, winning dismissal of both felonies against a senior federal official.
Winning challenging cases encourages effective plea bargaining.
***
That was it.
Do you think a winning record like this against tough opposition and even tougher odds made the phone ring off the hook?
One call I received in response to the notice was from an attorney who was himself under indictment for felonious fraud. His first question over the phone was not when he could come in, but how much it would cost to represent.
This is a dead giveaway that the caller may not truly be seeking representation from you.
Disguised as a prospective client, he wants to hear a figure so that he can tell the judge he's checked around, obtained several fee-quotes, and may he please have the services of the public defender, for free.
While a good attorney's instinct is to try to be of assistance, a successful attorney must do his best to make sure that his time is not wasted.
It is better to read law books calmly than it is to experience the frustration of having your time wasted because you were insufficiently self-protective.
One way to avoid having your time spent improvidently is to limit the amount of time you'll spend on a free discussion to encourage a prospective client to come in so you can evaluate his situation.
Another is to agree to a modest cover charge for the initial discussion which will be credited against a retainer, should there be a retainer.
The best way that I've found to avoid Nonclients is to discuss an amount for attorney compensation to a telephone caller.
No matter what amount is mentioned, this caller, blessedly, will never come in. This technique works so predictably well to screen out anticipated problem-clients that it seems like magic. Use it when you've decided it will not be helpful for this person to come in. You mention an amount, the person doesn't come in. Neither of you is disappointed.
Enter the shopper. You are the third in a line of five attorneys being asked to spend an hour being interviewed for ability to represent. Unless, that is, you have the presence to ask at the outset (and receive a truthful answer, which occurs often enough):
"Have you spoken to any other attorney before me?"
A woman called from across the Bay. Her husband had been arrested there a few days before for DUI with a very high blood alcohol concentration, she said. She had been referred by an attorney friend.
"I can see your husband tomorrow," I said. "Would you like directions on how to get to the office?"
"Oh, he can't come in," she said, "he suffered a head injury in an accident a few months ago."
Oh.
Yet he'd been driving, apparently, just the other day.
The principle is that if a prospective client will not voluntarily come to your office absent some compelling reason, such as barred windows and locked and guarded jail doors, you've lost nothing when he, or his wife, declines the invitation to make the effort to come in. The rule is: Empty chair, no client.
Why was the wife calling? Why didn't the husband call the attorney?
Caveat those who call on behalf of another except to introduce and ask whether you'll talk to their friend or family member. Of course, you will be more than happy to.
When a couple or a group comes in, you must see only one of them at first. You don't know who has the legal problem. You don't know what they're going to tell you. One may want to tell you the other's story. But the one doing the talking may be implicated in the conduct causing the legal problem. You'll have conflicted yourself out of representation at the gate.
Ask in the waiting room who has the legal problem, walk away, and see which one shows up in your office. That is your client. The other person may be a co-conspirator, an aider-and-abetter, a witness, or an innocent bystander. Until you conduct this screen, you won't know, will you?
A father will come in with his son, who has a legal problem. Do you think the son told the father everything? Separate them. Tell the father that to preserve the attorney-client privilege you must see the son, first, alone, which is legally correct.
You'll talk to the father later about how much the representation will cost. Dad reads a magazine, son talks to you. You tell the son that what he tells you is private. Everybody's happy. You have a better chance of finding out what really happened.
"Tell me what really happened," I say. "If I don't have my facts straight I can give out some terrible legal advice. You wouldn't tell the doctor about your stomach if your head was hurting. You'll get the wrong medicine. You might die." They understand that.
I have a friend who is a psychiatrist. I call him my psychiatrist, but he's my psychiatrist only in the sense that we enjoy fishing together.
"You're so lucky, John," I tell him. "You're in a profession where you know when your clients are nuts. I have to figure it out for myself, every time, and I don't have your training."
I referred a client to John, an accountant, arrested for stealing many thousands of dollars from his employer. Embezzlers never, incidentally, establish a reserve fund to take care of the inevitable attorney. The always seem to spend it on something much more important.
He had diverted and cashed checks belonging to his employer, a very successful businessman. The accountant was unhappy with his prospering employer for writing off on his taxes computer purchases made on the business account that he gave to his children.
Unfortunately for the accountant, he had devised a fail-safe method of contol over company checks such that if so much as a single one were diverted, the employer would discover it in a short period of time.
He'd caught himself.
Why did you do it, I asked. "I don't know," he replied.
Well, I thought I knew. He suffered from an excessive sense of righteousness, he stored grievances, and he was blind to the notion that he was not entitled to act as the Avenging Angel.
I shipped him off to the shrink, who will administer a battery of tests including the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, the MMPI. When the 500 short-answer questions (just check the little boxes) are completed with the special pencil, the answer sheet is submitted to the company that publishes the test.
This company will run the answer sheet through an electronic reader to compile the answers, which include controls against fudging to make oneself look good. Millions of people have taken this personality inventory in all cultures all over the world. A person who eats dirt in China is just as out-of-whack as a person who eats dirt in the United States. It is a good test.
After the gears turn, the lights flash, and the bells ring, a report pops out. This is an assemblage of computer generated paragraphs tailored to fit the particular test subject, in this case Mr. Accountant charged with felony embezzlement.
What did it say?
The report said that people with scores like his typically had an elevated sense of self-righteousness, tended to store grievances and had a reduced sense of personal insight that makes it difficult for them to understand why they do certain things.
Thank you very much.
I've made it a practice to try to understand what makes people tick. I enjoy seeing how close the MMPI result compares with my own take. It's funny how attuned to machine-reality one's judgment becomes after a certain amount of experience.
I don't know why they didn't tell me these things in the very fine law school that I attended.
I guess there are some things you're supposed to learn on your own.
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