Women Criminal Defense Attorneys: Give the Gift of Knowledge and Experience

During this season of giving I have been contemplating what gift this blog can give. And the answer that I keep coming back to is the gift of sharing knowledge and experience. I have used this phrase before “reach out, up, and back to connect and draw upon the knowledge base of fellow women.” Gifts of knowledge and experience last forever and truly are what matter most. And these gifts are not reserved for young lawyers. This past year, after twenty years of practicing, I was the recipient of such a gift. A woman that I met through NACDL’s Women’s Initiative, who has been practicing twenty-six years, generously shared her experience and knowledge with me. Of course these gifts aren’t reserved for women, either. Just last week I sat with a new male associate in our office and talked to him about court hearings. But it is important to make a specific effort to reach out, up, and back to women in the field. This is still a very male dominated field and women still struggle with finding their voice and direction. We need to help them and we need to help each other.

In that spirit I have been thinking a lot about what I have developed in my arsenal of defense tools that I found most useful in twenty years of practice. One of those tools is Judgment. When we start practicing we are obsessed and consumed with the idea that our opponent or the Judge will know the rules or case law better than we do. We falsely believe that mastering the law alone will protect us in a fight. The truth is, in my opinion, that these are a criminal defense lawyer’s weakest tools. That is not to say that knowing the law is not important. It is. But not at the expense of one of your most valuable tools… your judgment. You have to learn to develop your guiding voice, your gut, and your instinct. They all come together to form Judgment. This is when you decide “should I reach out to the detective or prosecutor?” in the midst of an investigation. This is when you decide “do I sit down and stop talking because I’m winning?” This is when you decide what kind of resolution you can push for and which is going to cause push back and make matters worse. This is when you decide which argument passes the “laugh test” and which doesn’t.

The list of how judgment affects every aspect of criminal defense is endless. I could go on for days. The point here is that in defending a client sometimes the best defense entails putting down your book and Westlaw and listening to your own guiding voice. There is tremendous amount of instinct to this job and the earlier you start trusting that instinct or finding a mentor that can help you develop it when you are insecure about it (which is normal), the faster you will grow as a criminal defense lawyer. There are certainly more tools at my disposal which I am pledging to share more about on the blog and in my office to whoever wants guidance. That is my pledge in the New Year, to share my own knowledge and experience with generous heart and open spirit. It is my way of paying it forward. Happy Holidays!