Legal Aid Facing Financial Problems Options

[Critter]

NY Lawyer reports today on the resignation of the head of Legal Aid in New York City and on the fact that the group is facing financial problems. http://www.nylawyer.com/news/04/06/061004a.html


It seems in vogue to laugh at Legal Aid Lawyers. There is rarely a Law and Order episode in which a Legal Aid Lawyer is not referred to as an idiot.

I think the argument is that any relatively good looking lawyer who went to a relatively good school would not be working for legal aid.

But, most of the relatively good looking lawyers who went to relatively good schools working for private law firms think that state prosecutors are idiots. Most private lawyers think that if state prosecutors had anything going for them, they wouldn't be working for the government.

the whole point of being a state lawyer is to cash out by selling your connections to a private law firm, after you put in the required x amount of time as a government lawyer. In my personal opinion, this explains why very few private law firms are ever the subject of criminal investigations.


The difference between state prosecutors and Legal Aid is that Legal Aid is actually helping a lot of people.

It is almost impossible for a prosecutor to not win a criminal conviction, because (in New York City) the judge is likely to assume that the person charged with a crime is guilty. Whenever a person charged with a crime has hired a high profile relatively good lawyer (who has an unlimited budget) state prosecutors have usually failed to win convictions.

The real lesson of the OJ trial comes from watching what happens when prosecutors have an opponent who can spend as much money as they can. In a battle between a State prosecutor that has an unlimited buget and who already has the judge on his side and someone trying working for legal aid trying to get justice for someone is like an adult fighting with a child. However, when the defense attorney has a wealthy client who with an unlimted budget, you get to see just how silly prosecutors are.

Even I know that in court, a lawyer is never to ask a witness a question that he doesn't already know the answer to. The purpose of discovery and depositions is so that the lawyer can know in advance the answers to every question he is going to ask every witness during trial. For the prosecutors in the OJ trial to actually ask OJ Simpson something that they didn't know the answer to and to ask OJ Simpson to try on gloves when they didn't know what the outcome would be, is basic stupidity.

Just imagine how many people the prosecutors in the OJ Trial sent to prison while being as stupid as they obviously are. OJ's lawyers made the state prosecutors in his trial and the police look like total idiots. Yet the prosecutors in the OJ trial and the police in OJ's trial were superstars who were bragging about their conviction rates. Obviously, even an idiot who doesn't know much about law can win convictions against people who are economically disadvantaged.