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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First off, more accessible lawyers can absolutely achieve the same results, but I will attempt to answer the question as you posed it, presuming you’re talking about criminal defense lawyers:
There is an enormous price range of lawyers, going from a couple hundred dollars per hour to several thousand.
* On the low end, you have solo practitioners who are just starting out and making a name for themselves. With this type of lawyer, it’s possible to find an ambitious attorney who is willing to work really hard for you. However, they will not usually have a big staff, and their practical experience will be limited since they are building their reputation. This lawyer is willing to go to trial, but their legal knowledge is largely book-learned and theoretical.
* The next step up includes small firms who are most comfortable pushing paper. These are one to five-person firms who maybe have a paralegal and a couple secretaries, but they make most of their money negotiating plea deals for guilty clients. DUI, low-level drug possession, and misdemeanor theft are this type of firm’s bread and butter, so to speak. They might go to trial a few times per year.
* The next tier is a specialized criminal defense firm, often a large regional firm that might have offices in a big city. A lawyer at one of these firms has access to far more resources in terms of investigating your version of events, as well as a great deal of courtroom experience in whatever you have been charged with. They have a good understanding of legal strategy, which means deciding what parts of the state’s case to challenge and what parts to downplay. Trial experience also means they know how to perform for juries. Hiring a partner at one of these firms means you’ll have a whole team of associates and paralegals digging into your case back at the office also. Partners at this type of firm also usually have strong professional and personal relationships with not only the judges, but also their opposing counsel. They know how to tailor their arguments based on how the judge likes to control the courtroom, and they know what to expect from the prosecuting lawyer. Both attorneys and the judge might go out for happy hour or golf next week.
* The top level is the celebrity criminal defense lawyer. Robert Shapiro, Johnnie Cochran, Ann Bremner, Mark Geragos, etc. These are the attorneys who are happy to get on TV and say whatever they need to in order to sway public opinion. If you’re hiring one of these, public opinion matters to you as much as the outcome of your case does.
Tl;dr – You get what you pay for. A more expensive lawyer usually has more practical experience, knows what arguments work best and when, knows (and might be friends with) many judges and prosecutors, and has a stronger supporting team behind them.
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