I always hear about rich people hiring expensive lawyers to escape punishments. How do they do that, and what stops more accessible lawyers from achieving the same result?
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Good lawyers know legal loop holes, have relationships with officials, have political pull, and may be owed favors. This commands a higher price.
The big difference will be the amount of time they’ll put into it, and the size of the team.
It’s the difference between having one lawyer who is juggling several cases and can put a few hours into your case, and having a dedicated team, including investigators, who will do it full-time.
A defense attorney’s job is to make the best possible arguments for your side. This might mean saying you didn’t do it, or it might mean saying law enforcement acted improperly, or it could mean claiming that there are mitigating factors. There are other possibilities too. What the best argument *is* depends on the person and the situation.
Expensive lawyers tend to be able to bring more resources to bear when making these arguments. Sometimes this is just a matter of having more time to research: public defenders are famously overworked. Others may be more specialized in working particular types of cases, and have a better understanding of the case law in particular situations. Some are especially skilled at understanding what the jury may want to hear. The exact reason varies from lawyer to lawyer.
The burden is on the prosecution to prove every element of a criminal case beyond a reasonable doubt. That is a very high bar. A good lawyer makes this difficult task even more difficult, by fighting about everything, by conducting extensive investigation to find evidence that pokes small holes in the prosecution’s case, etc… As the prosecution is trying to climb a steep hill, they find the hill getting steeper, with the path covered by tons of obstacles. Suddenly, they’re less sure about whether they’ll be able to carry their burden. So… they offer a deal. “Maybe we’ll prove our case, maybe not… but if we do, your boy is going away for a long time. Maybe we split the difference, and he goes away for a little while on this lesser charge, which we CAN prove, and then he doesn’t have to roll the dice, and we all save a whole lot of money going through the exercises.”
A public defender is handling ~20-30 cases at at time. They maybe have a paralegal working under them to help out. But that case load and the financial resources available limits the ability to fully research, prepare, etc.. for each case. You can’t go 100% all in on one case when you have to keep the other 29 going forward as well. Public defenders are often younger lawyers at the early end of their career (ie: less trial experience and less connections)
If you hire a major legal firm you may be hiring a big name in the legal community who is influential and is connected well to people in the attorney general’s office, judges, and likely sheriff’s. You will likely be getting a team of lawyers with multiple people dedicated to researching your case. The lawyer arguing your case during the trial is also likely to be much more experienced in that regard, and honestly probably better at it than the prosecutor they are going up against. And with all of these resources they are going to be able to put much more pressure into an out of court settlement (aka financial that an rich person can cover) to avoid jail time
98% of convictions are a result of plea bargaining. Expensive lawyers represent your commitment to wasting as much of the courts time as possible, giving you more leverage to haggle for the lowest punishment.
By having the resources to parse the law in your favor can pay an investigator to track down and interview the witnesses against you, to hire or knows when to hire experts that will testify on your behalf, knows what’s a winning argument and can put it forth, can dictate or at least influence the trial schedule.and many more little things
My lawyer in one issue was college roommates with the judge and they hang out on the weekends.
Things went well and it was worth springing for the higher rate.
I was only able to get that lawyer because the partner at my firm was able to put in a call for me.
Having “good” lawyers can help you drag things out in your favor. For example, they could file a thousand motions and briefs all day everyday, all of which will require the opposing side to respond, as well as consume court time to sift through. If it is a tort case (you vs. someone else) then its a race to whoever can burn more money in lawyer fees until the other side gives up. If it is a criminal case, then they could literally pour through every single statute and past relevant cases to make supporting arguments in your favor. A public defender would tell you to take a plea deal and a jail term on Day 1 just to get you off his file.
The law is complicated. Really, really complicated. We could have a whole conversation about why that is, and what costs it creates for society, and whether those costs are evenly distributed (they aren’t), and on and on, but they key point is that it’s complicated.
Lawyers come in a wide range of skills. To stereotype, at one end of the spectrum are “ambulance chasers,” solo guys/gals who got mediocre grades at a mediocre school (NB: excellent lawyers can come out of poorly ranked schools) who have to juggle a dozen cases in order to make rent. At the other end is BigLaw: the “best and brightest,” with straight As from a top school, an entire team of junior attorneys and paralegals, time to focus on your case, and a partner down the hall who used to work in the Attorney General’s office. You don’t just hire an attorney, you hire their entire team – if they have one.
Without legal training, it’s really hard to explain the details, just like it would be really hard for a plumber to explain how they handled a complicated problem if you don’t know the details and the lingo of plumbing. A good legal team will explore every possible aspect of your case and dig up all the details (whether they seem important or not) and, if they can’t find an argument in existing law that works, they will create one that is crafted for your situation, including details like the legal philosophy of the judge who is handling your case. A good plumber will thoroughly understand your whole system, and if they need a part they can’t find, they will have it custom made for you (I assume. I am not a plumber so I hope I’m not making a fool of myself). A merely competent attorney without a huge support staff may not have time to do all of that work, and, frankly, they may not have the brains to craft a good original argument.
Think about it like being on an airplane – in a storm, a competent pilot will keep you alive. A good pilot will keep you comfortable. A great pilot won’t spill your martini. The skills that go into it are more art than science, but the difference in the result is very real.
This is a very short and non-technical response, and the metaphors I’ve used will break down if pushed, because this is ELI5. It’s also just my perspective. For my own part, I would be interested to know if anyone has done research on whether judges give more credence to original arguments from expensive attorneys, merely because of their prestige. I wouldn’t be surprised if they do.
Source: I am a pretty good lawyer who used to manage outside legal teams, big and small, good and bad.
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