Personally, I start out suspicious of clients who have attorneys working pro bono in criminal defense.
This is because there are in every state and jurisdiction public defense attorneys paid by the state. Some are excellent, some are terrible, most are about as good as the prosecutors, which makes it mostly a fair fight. Monied defendants can afford to pay defense attorneys, so pro bono attorneys only get into the case where there isn't money involved.
Why, then, do they get involved? Some get involved to support a principle they believe in, but often then they are as interested in making their point as in the client's interests -- not that they wouldn't represent the client well, I'm not saying that, but they aren't there primarily because of the client but because of some principle they want to support, so their participation doesn't say anything good about the clinet necessarily. One place this happens, for example, is either liberal or conservative public interest law firms taking on clients to make political points. (The Clinton situation brought these folks out in droves.)
Other times it's because the case is high profile and they want to make a public splash or get their name in front of possible future clients or the like. Again, they will usually do a good job for the client, but also again, they are really using the client for their purposes so you can't think that their involvement says anything in particular about the client.
Sometimes, in some jurisdictions, they are assigned by some bar program or the court, so again, that's got nothing to do with whether the client is innocent or guilty.
So in none of these cases does the fact that a pro bono attorney is involved say anything about the client's guilt or innocence.
In a very few cases, often ones where the pro bono attorneys are part of a law school clinic program, they really are going to bat for a particular client when they honestly believe the justice system has failed the client and they have made a determination that they want to go in and achieve justice. The Innocence Project is a good example of this. See innocenceproject.org In these cases, at least the attorneys are involved because they do believe that the client got a raw deal. But usually they don't get involved until after the initial trial.
So if you hear of a client going to trial with pro bono attorneys, you have to ask, what's in it for them. As with statistics, sometimes they are what they seem to be, but you should never assume so until you've done a thorough evaluation! |
