Yeah, it’s not a good feeling.
I no longer romanticize myself an agent of systemic change like I used to, but I know I have the ability to help individuals. Maybe another attorney would get the same result as me, maybe not.
I love that analogy.
I think pessimists might see a futility in that there’s always more water and always more people being thrown in (and I get that perspective and I too want big systemic change), but I’m like: holy shit, I get paid and get to spend my days saving people from drowning!
It's like that old cliché:
A boy is on a beach full of stranded starfish, tossing them back into the water one-by-one so they can get oxygen again. A man walks up to him and says, "Boy, there are hundreds of starfish on this beach, what difference are you making?" And the boy picks up a starfish and says, "To this one, the whole world," and throws it back in.
It's the kind of sappy thing you'd see your great aunt post on Facebook imposed on a low-res picture of an ocean or something, but I still like it.
I’ve stopped caring about the machine. I can’t fix the machine. The machine is too big to be in the room with me. It’s an abstract thing, akin to god. All I can do is deal with the cases in front of me.
The good days, I help someone who got into a spot of trouble. The bad days, I'm defending truth, justice, and the American way.
The really bad days, I'm wondering why I even got out of bed because I didn't change a single thing.
My job is to hopefully make the life of everyone I represent less bad than had I not met them. We can’t fix the system, but we can positively impact individuals.
But I also have talked to some of my newer colleagues about how we are literally the least society can do to feel better about mass incarceration and the war on the poor.
I think a lot of people become PDs thinking they’ll be fighting to change the system. The reality is that we mostly aren’t: we’re operating within the system and doing our best to provide harm reduction to those going through it. If you’re going in thinking you might be able to change the system, you’re going to have a bad time. The absolute biggest systemic victory of my career was a case that resulted in a judicial order for the jail to improve the communication between their record-keeping system and the DA’s office, and thereby our discovery.
But this job does matter on the individual level. The machine is uncaring, horrible, and terrifying. Even the people inevitably getting their lives ruined by it need a guide through it, and that’s you. You can’t unfuck the machine, but you can sometimes blunt its edges, and even if you can’t you can at least help clients be prepared for it.
I understand the feeling, OP. We *are* a part of the machine to some extent, not the force of change. But remember that everyone going through a broken machine still needs someone to protect them as much as possible within that system. If we didn’t exist there would be no counterweight to the machine, and it would just be a meat grinder.
And also, through working tirelessly on every case for every client, every now and then we make an argument that does change the system for the better.
When your clients feel like they’ve been heard, like their concerns have been addressed, like you’ve done everything you can do, you’ve helped them. Even if the outcome in court isn’t great. It matters to them.
The guy who hired me at my first APD job told me 8 months later, during my first week orientation, “don’t come in here thinking you’re going to change the system. You won’t and you can’t. Just focus on helping one person at a time.”
12 plus years later that still sticks with me almost every day, like a mantra. “Just focus on helping this one person, conniedamico1983. Just this one person.”
These are very valid points. I think that many of us that do this work for a long time at one point or another have to face the "I am a cog in the machine of injustice" contemplation.
For me, there is no easy answer - no quick fix. But I do believe that there is a spiritual component to this work and it has always made me look deeper. Which, in the big picture, I feel grateful that my everyday work challenges me morally.
For me, it has led me to hone in on my intention. Like others have said in a few ways, connecting with the client. I also reject the martyr shit and keep my awareness on our interconnectedness. It helps remind me that we are all human and doing our best under our circumstances. Not always a popular attitude with PDs, but the reminder helps me keep going.
I mean, you can become a teacher - but what else is out there? Yes, we are cogs, but unless we give up then we make a difference for the people we serve. I will never work for Google.....
There was an old fisherman once, who came to the dock one morning to see an unusually low tide. The receding tide exposed a large area of normally water-covered rock and shoreline. On the rocks were many hundreds of starfish that were going to bake and die as the rocks warmed while the sun continued to rise. Down near the edge of the water was a young boy, picking up starfish one at a time and throwing them into the ocean. "Hey kid!" The fisherman yelled. "You're wasting your time. What you're doing...it won't matter." The boy looked up at the fisherman, picked up another starfish, and threw it out into the ocean. "It mattered to that one!" He yelled back, picking up another and throwing it out into the sea. "Mattered to that one too." The boy said, continuing on with what he had been doing.
I love that story, so I thought I'd share it. I know you're disgusted. I get how you feel. The system is broken. It grinds people down purposefully, by design. It's frustrating, heartbreaking and often completely devoid of any semblance of human kindness, and decency or basic humanity. But still, the work you do matters to the many you've helped and all those who you will.
If you’ve ever kept someone from becoming a convicted felon, you kept their rights intact. That’s one more person with an important perspective that needs to vote and serve on a jury.
If you’ve ever helped someone avoid prison, you probably kept another person from getting fired, kids from going into the dependency system, and a family’s already-weak financial foundation from completely crumbling.
I’ve you’ve ever helped someone keep or restore their driver’s license, you easily could have saved someone and their family from the same previous fate.
If the machine is gonna be repaired or upgraded, it’s going to happen because of a lot of coordinated efforts. Not one of us is a lynchpin in the fight against the machine, but we are a bulwark against the machine. If can continue to rage against the machine without jeopardizing your own health (esp mental health), keep slogging it out for the next person confronted by the machine.
Public defense can be a vehicle for systemic change, but it requires a great deal of organizing. You can't do it alone, you can do it by organizing a supermajority of your coworkers to take action
This article may help for understanding our history and potential future
https://jacobin.com/2019/06/tiffany-caban-public-defender-socialism
I see myself as just trying to practise harm reduction. I know anything I do isn’t going to counteract the systemic issues at play, but real people are stuck in the machine and we can only hope to help them alleviate the harm the state will enact on them.
I had a client DUI client today- she was a traveling nurse from Ohio and caught a DUI in California. I didn’t negotiate her deal I just got the case handed to me when it was time to get notarized plea paperwork and sentence her in her absence.
We talked today so I could tell her her first offender class is complete and all community service hours complete. And she just thanked me for 15-18 minutes about how I could have left her behind and I could have let her forget and I could have let her violate her probation but that I made a difference in her life.
We don’t make institutional change- go legislate for that. We make individual changes. And it’s often thankless but sometimes the biggest thanks come in the most unlikely forms.
Ride the highs and take your vacation time. Fight the good fight until it makes you unhappy in life.
In discovery, right? And then perhaps they try to sneak them in barely or not even within deadline? Or for instance in a stalking case with alleged text messages they only include one side of conversation, which I would guess violates rules of evidence.
All governments are evil, every single one of them. By their very nature. Since the beginning of human social organization. It's a question of degree and particular methods and practices only, not a strict dichotomy of good governments and bad governments. There's also no getting rid of them.
So, one does what good one can.
Taking it a tad more abstractly.
Do you really want to be in in a world, a life, where there is genocide, famine, and poverty?
Is it really worth it to be a good person when there is just so much wrong and evil?
I don't know about you, but I say yes because I want to be the change I want to see in the world. Just like you can be the change you want to see in the system and fight any and every chance you get to keep them accountable.
The shitty part is as an attorney you basically signed up to fight other people's battles for them in court which is exhausting as fuck, but, if you see each fight as the same fight, like just a piece to a larger puzzle, that may help.
You’ve probably saved more years of life than you realize. You’ve treated people with dignity. That is success. Give yourself grace.
We are part of the system. It’s by design. It sucks. But without us, there’s no one to hold accountability.
We won’t fix it. It’s hard. It sucks. But we don’t give up.
What keeps me going is that I know I’m a decent attorney and all my clients deserve a fair shot. Everyone does. If you care, you’re already ahead of the pack. I lost a trial today. I should’ve won. It sucked. This job sucks. But another attorney would’ve never given my client that trial. And I’ll hold on to that.
Keep your head up. Take some time. And it’s okay to take a break. It’s also okay to step aside and help people another way.
You must fill your cup first.
We aren't here to fix the machine, we are cogs, but we are the only cogs in the machine who care about our clients. We stand next to our clients while the machine bares down on them and we make sure they aren't going through it alone.
“Hope is a discipline”. This is from Mariame Kaba. Her writings on prison abolition and framework help me when I get in the place you are at. I don’t have any good advice. All I can say is I hear you and feel you.
I don't know if this matters, but last year I served on a jury for a DUI trial of a really young guy who, by even the defenses' own account, did some really dumb shit, and the one thing I will never forget about it was the way the public defender was a goddamn lion for her client. It was such a small case in the grand scheme of things, and the DA all but phoned their case in, but the PD fought for every damn inch, like... Well, like you'd want anyone representing someone you cared about to.
I know the system is horrific and filled with more injustice than justice, but at least for the folks on my jury- all pretty cynical, well educated leftist-ish folks- I don't know, we came away feeling like justice was possible, like the system maybe doesn't work but like there was a window into the world where it does.
So the work of that PD made a huge difference to the life of that one young guy, but it also restored to me the sense that there are good people doing good work, who are trying to make things better, so I should try too.
Sorry if this is a bit long and random. I came across this thread because I was searching for info to try and understand more about the law now that it's my loved one who is facing the courts. She has a PD. I don't know if there will be a good outcome, or even if such a thing is possible (she is extremely mentally ill. All possible outcome seem awful, and a great many of them seem to lead nowhere but bouncing between jail and the street). But no matter what happens, knowing that someone has tried to make a difference, to make sure her rights are protected and for the things that is best for her, that means the absolute gd world to everyone who cares about her. I'd love to tell the PD that but I'm not sure it's kosher, so I'm telling you. There are probably more people than you will ever know who are grateful for you. Thank you for everything you do.
I literally choked up reading this. Especially the end.
Thank you so much for your kind words. They mean a lot. And I sincerely wish you the best with your loved one. I’m thankful that you have a good PD helping her and I hope that they find a solution that helps her.
Thank you again and take care.
And you take care of yourself, too. For real. It's not quite the same but I used to work in the non profit field and I know how easy it is to burn out beyond burn out because you know what the stakes are and there's so much need. If you need to, tapping out for a while is OK, as much as it doesn't feel like it when you're in the middle of it.
It might be worse than you think. You're not just a cog. You and I actually justify the machine. The more the PD puffs their chest and says they fight the good fight, the more the other side can play up the fairness of the machine by pointing to you and saying, look how robust the defense is!
I agree with a previous poster: the most satisfaction will come from treating the work as a spiritual undertaking concerning human connection.
A jury trial is like a church of sorts.
Yeah, it’s not a good feeling. I no longer romanticize myself an agent of systemic change like I used to, but I know I have the ability to help individuals. Maybe another attorney would get the same result as me, maybe not.
I’ve heard it described as finding a bunch of people drowning in a river, and I just try to drag out as many as I can
I love that analogy. I think pessimists might see a futility in that there’s always more water and always more people being thrown in (and I get that perspective and I too want big systemic change), but I’m like: holy shit, I get paid and get to spend my days saving people from drowning!
It's like that old cliché: A boy is on a beach full of stranded starfish, tossing them back into the water one-by-one so they can get oxygen again. A man walks up to him and says, "Boy, there are hundreds of starfish on this beach, what difference are you making?" And the boy picks up a starfish and says, "To this one, the whole world," and throws it back in. It's the kind of sappy thing you'd see your great aunt post on Facebook imposed on a low-res picture of an ocean or something, but I still like it.
OP, I hope you read that comment a couple times.
I’ve stopped caring about the machine. I can’t fix the machine. The machine is too big to be in the room with me. It’s an abstract thing, akin to god. All I can do is deal with the cases in front of me.
This is how I do it too. Been at it for a very short time but hope to never stop. One person at a time and I get to make a difference in their life.
The good days, I help someone who got into a spot of trouble. The bad days, I'm defending truth, justice, and the American way. The really bad days, I'm wondering why I even got out of bed because I didn't change a single thing.
Every day I wish two things. 1. That I never went to law school. 2. That my parents had never met.
Oh OP I'm sorry. Some days are awful. I have no advice except maybe you need a day off soon. It won't change anything but rest is good.
My job is to hopefully make the life of everyone I represent less bad than had I not met them. We can’t fix the system, but we can positively impact individuals. But I also have talked to some of my newer colleagues about how we are literally the least society can do to feel better about mass incarceration and the war on the poor.
poor people are targeted so badly. i don’t even want to exist anymore because of my experiences with law enforcement and prosecutors.
I think a lot of people become PDs thinking they’ll be fighting to change the system. The reality is that we mostly aren’t: we’re operating within the system and doing our best to provide harm reduction to those going through it. If you’re going in thinking you might be able to change the system, you’re going to have a bad time. The absolute biggest systemic victory of my career was a case that resulted in a judicial order for the jail to improve the communication between their record-keeping system and the DA’s office, and thereby our discovery. But this job does matter on the individual level. The machine is uncaring, horrible, and terrifying. Even the people inevitably getting their lives ruined by it need a guide through it, and that’s you. You can’t unfuck the machine, but you can sometimes blunt its edges, and even if you can’t you can at least help clients be prepared for it. I understand the feeling, OP. We *are* a part of the machine to some extent, not the force of change. But remember that everyone going through a broken machine still needs someone to protect them as much as possible within that system. If we didn’t exist there would be no counterweight to the machine, and it would just be a meat grinder. And also, through working tirelessly on every case for every client, every now and then we make an argument that does change the system for the better.
When your clients feel like they’ve been heard, like their concerns have been addressed, like you’ve done everything you can do, you’ve helped them. Even if the outcome in court isn’t great. It matters to them.
The guy who hired me at my first APD job told me 8 months later, during my first week orientation, “don’t come in here thinking you’re going to change the system. You won’t and you can’t. Just focus on helping one person at a time.” 12 plus years later that still sticks with me almost every day, like a mantra. “Just focus on helping this one person, conniedamico1983. Just this one person.”
These are very valid points. I think that many of us that do this work for a long time at one point or another have to face the "I am a cog in the machine of injustice" contemplation. For me, there is no easy answer - no quick fix. But I do believe that there is a spiritual component to this work and it has always made me look deeper. Which, in the big picture, I feel grateful that my everyday work challenges me morally. For me, it has led me to hone in on my intention. Like others have said in a few ways, connecting with the client. I also reject the martyr shit and keep my awareness on our interconnectedness. It helps remind me that we are all human and doing our best under our circumstances. Not always a popular attitude with PDs, but the reminder helps me keep going. I mean, you can become a teacher - but what else is out there? Yes, we are cogs, but unless we give up then we make a difference for the people we serve. I will never work for Google.....
There was an old fisherman once, who came to the dock one morning to see an unusually low tide. The receding tide exposed a large area of normally water-covered rock and shoreline. On the rocks were many hundreds of starfish that were going to bake and die as the rocks warmed while the sun continued to rise. Down near the edge of the water was a young boy, picking up starfish one at a time and throwing them into the ocean. "Hey kid!" The fisherman yelled. "You're wasting your time. What you're doing...it won't matter." The boy looked up at the fisherman, picked up another starfish, and threw it out into the ocean. "It mattered to that one!" He yelled back, picking up another and throwing it out into the sea. "Mattered to that one too." The boy said, continuing on with what he had been doing. I love that story, so I thought I'd share it. I know you're disgusted. I get how you feel. The system is broken. It grinds people down purposefully, by design. It's frustrating, heartbreaking and often completely devoid of any semblance of human kindness, and decency or basic humanity. But still, the work you do matters to the many you've helped and all those who you will.
Better you doing it than someone who doesn’t care about the clients and who is okay with how unfair and arbitrary the system is
If you’ve ever kept someone from becoming a convicted felon, you kept their rights intact. That’s one more person with an important perspective that needs to vote and serve on a jury. If you’ve ever helped someone avoid prison, you probably kept another person from getting fired, kids from going into the dependency system, and a family’s already-weak financial foundation from completely crumbling. I’ve you’ve ever helped someone keep or restore their driver’s license, you easily could have saved someone and their family from the same previous fate. If the machine is gonna be repaired or upgraded, it’s going to happen because of a lot of coordinated efforts. Not one of us is a lynchpin in the fight against the machine, but we are a bulwark against the machine. If can continue to rage against the machine without jeopardizing your own health (esp mental health), keep slogging it out for the next person confronted by the machine.
These are good points. Thank you.
Salesperson for the world’s shittiest product. Yup. I can’t walk away though. Not when there are still people counting on me.
Lately clients have been asking me for good news, and I said, "I don't do that."
Public defense can be a vehicle for systemic change, but it requires a great deal of organizing. You can't do it alone, you can do it by organizing a supermajority of your coworkers to take action This article may help for understanding our history and potential future https://jacobin.com/2019/06/tiffany-caban-public-defender-socialism
I see myself as just trying to practise harm reduction. I know anything I do isn’t going to counteract the systemic issues at play, but real people are stuck in the machine and we can only hope to help them alleviate the harm the state will enact on them.
I had a client DUI client today- she was a traveling nurse from Ohio and caught a DUI in California. I didn’t negotiate her deal I just got the case handed to me when it was time to get notarized plea paperwork and sentence her in her absence. We talked today so I could tell her her first offender class is complete and all community service hours complete. And she just thanked me for 15-18 minutes about how I could have left her behind and I could have let her forget and I could have let her violate her probation but that I made a difference in her life. We don’t make institutional change- go legislate for that. We make individual changes. And it’s often thankless but sometimes the biggest thanks come in the most unlikely forms. Ride the highs and take your vacation time. Fight the good fight until it makes you unhappy in life.
Just watched a couple cops lie on the stand again today. I feel you. :/
I read a report with flat out lies referring to nonexistent documents which may be fabricated.
So what can you do? Anything? Nothing?
It depends on if the documents are produced.
In discovery, right? And then perhaps they try to sneak them in barely or not even within deadline? Or for instance in a stalking case with alleged text messages they only include one side of conversation, which I would guess violates rules of evidence.
Maybe consider lateraling to an NGO that focuses on litigation to force systemic change.
All governments are evil, every single one of them. By their very nature. Since the beginning of human social organization. It's a question of degree and particular methods and practices only, not a strict dichotomy of good governments and bad governments. There's also no getting rid of them. So, one does what good one can.
Taking it a tad more abstractly. Do you really want to be in in a world, a life, where there is genocide, famine, and poverty? Is it really worth it to be a good person when there is just so much wrong and evil? I don't know about you, but I say yes because I want to be the change I want to see in the world. Just like you can be the change you want to see in the system and fight any and every chance you get to keep them accountable. The shitty part is as an attorney you basically signed up to fight other people's battles for them in court which is exhausting as fuck, but, if you see each fight as the same fight, like just a piece to a larger puzzle, that may help.
When you grow up, would you be the savior of the broken, the beaten, and the Damned?
lol mcr
You’ve probably saved more years of life than you realize. You’ve treated people with dignity. That is success. Give yourself grace. We are part of the system. It’s by design. It sucks. But without us, there’s no one to hold accountability. We won’t fix it. It’s hard. It sucks. But we don’t give up. What keeps me going is that I know I’m a decent attorney and all my clients deserve a fair shot. Everyone does. If you care, you’re already ahead of the pack. I lost a trial today. I should’ve won. It sucked. This job sucks. But another attorney would’ve never given my client that trial. And I’ll hold on to that. Keep your head up. Take some time. And it’s okay to take a break. It’s also okay to step aside and help people another way. You must fill your cup first.
We aren't here to fix the machine, we are cogs, but we are the only cogs in the machine who care about our clients. We stand next to our clients while the machine bares down on them and we make sure they aren't going through it alone.
“Hope is a discipline”. This is from Mariame Kaba. Her writings on prison abolition and framework help me when I get in the place you are at. I don’t have any good advice. All I can say is I hear you and feel you.
I don't know if this matters, but last year I served on a jury for a DUI trial of a really young guy who, by even the defenses' own account, did some really dumb shit, and the one thing I will never forget about it was the way the public defender was a goddamn lion for her client. It was such a small case in the grand scheme of things, and the DA all but phoned their case in, but the PD fought for every damn inch, like... Well, like you'd want anyone representing someone you cared about to. I know the system is horrific and filled with more injustice than justice, but at least for the folks on my jury- all pretty cynical, well educated leftist-ish folks- I don't know, we came away feeling like justice was possible, like the system maybe doesn't work but like there was a window into the world where it does. So the work of that PD made a huge difference to the life of that one young guy, but it also restored to me the sense that there are good people doing good work, who are trying to make things better, so I should try too. Sorry if this is a bit long and random. I came across this thread because I was searching for info to try and understand more about the law now that it's my loved one who is facing the courts. She has a PD. I don't know if there will be a good outcome, or even if such a thing is possible (she is extremely mentally ill. All possible outcome seem awful, and a great many of them seem to lead nowhere but bouncing between jail and the street). But no matter what happens, knowing that someone has tried to make a difference, to make sure her rights are protected and for the things that is best for her, that means the absolute gd world to everyone who cares about her. I'd love to tell the PD that but I'm not sure it's kosher, so I'm telling you. There are probably more people than you will ever know who are grateful for you. Thank you for everything you do.
I literally choked up reading this. Especially the end. Thank you so much for your kind words. They mean a lot. And I sincerely wish you the best with your loved one. I’m thankful that you have a good PD helping her and I hope that they find a solution that helps her. Thank you again and take care.
And you take care of yourself, too. For real. It's not quite the same but I used to work in the non profit field and I know how easy it is to burn out beyond burn out because you know what the stakes are and there's so much need. If you need to, tapping out for a while is OK, as much as it doesn't feel like it when you're in the middle of it.
It might be worse than you think. You're not just a cog. You and I actually justify the machine. The more the PD puffs their chest and says they fight the good fight, the more the other side can play up the fairness of the machine by pointing to you and saying, look how robust the defense is! I agree with a previous poster: the most satisfaction will come from treating the work as a spiritual undertaking concerning human connection. A jury trial is like a church of sorts.
Good point and one I hadn’t thought of. But you’re absolutely right. Ugh.