Quote:
Originally Posted by MBates
To be fair to me, since I post as me, MBates the lawyer, I am somewhat constrained in how I post. That aside, I choose to post in these threads with my defence lawyer hat firmly on.
If I am overdoing that, I can stop. I literally had to be told by a judge today to stop talking. It happens to me on occasion.
I would be naive to think nearly 15 years of this job has not changed me. It has to have. But I'm not the cold dude you imagine from my posts. For reasons that may be obvious I don't post about my kids. But they exist. And I love them.
And for reasons that should now be obvious, I don't allow myself to really mix my family and work lives. Which likely explains how I come across as a poster that is not bothered by this or other such cases.
If you want to know the truth...the gore and the obvious disturbing stuff isn't what gets to me. It's strange little things that seem benign but for some reason just get to you. I can't explain why that happens but it does.
But I will also say that your perspective is forced to be different when you speak with a person who has done horrible things and you are confronted with the reality of them being a person who at one time may have been just the same as you or me. I'm not speaking of any person here just the generalized statement.
So don't leave the thread on my account. Leave if you want, but if giving the defence lawyer contrarian position a rest is needed then I can make that happen pretty easily.
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I think you should keep doing exactly what you're doing, both on the board and off it.
Defence lawyers are critical to our polity; it is too easy to allow the rights of individuals as against the state to be eroded under cover of the fact that the state generally exercises its power against people who are morally hard to sympathize with.
And I can only imagine that it is a hard path to walk sometimes. My own path is easier, as the only thing my clients stand to lose (most of the time) is money, and the disputes I'm involved with take place in a very "lawful-neutral" moral universe. I couldn't do what you do, and I really respect the people who can.