Okay, I see what you mean. That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the explanation.

First offenders (and their families) are motivated to spend everything they can to get out of trouble. After the first time, those resources have been spent. Thus what appears to be a circular argument.

“Repeat offender” and “career criminal” are not synonymous. Most repeat offenders are trying to scrape their way out of born-loserdom. Those few who actually make a business of crime (and who consider lawyers a cost of doing business) are a special case.

Well then, I stand corrected. I’ve just heard more than one of you folks speak well of your career criminal clients — e.g. that they have money and understand what you’re doing for them — but perhaps that doesn’t necessarily translate into good income. I do have to point out that your supporting argument does have a certain, uhm…circularity…that makes it less than convincing. However, you would certainly know more about it than I do.

Why?

Because all of the money is in representing first offenders.

Thanks, Jack. I can’t help noticing, however, that you didn’t say it was “concise.” It started out as a response to the comment thread at SJ, but it sort of grew into this long post about how we view the roles we play in each other’s lives, criminal justice, and why I find criminal lawyers so fascinating. Nothing terribly surprising, really, but I like it when I can weave a bunch of themes together like that.