Important, Urgent and the Telephonic Tractor BeamWhen I made the transition from prosecutor to defense attorney at the end of 2008, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect. I had plenty of good friends who were defense attorneys and they had been more than kind about showing me the ropes of everything from advertising to office management to record keeping. They had pointed me in the direction of software, private investigators, office space and accountants.One of the things that I was not prepared for, however, was the high volume of telephone calls you get as a defense attorney. Now, don’t get me wrong — I received plenty of phone calls as a prosecutor from witnesses, victims’ families, and police officers, but they pale in comparison to the sheer amount of phone calls one gets in private practice. I’m not speaking about phone calls from people with cash money looking to hire you, either — I’m talking about the calls from spouses, brothers, sisters, mothers, aunts, uncles, grandmothers, and girlfriends that all call for the same exact purpose:“I’m just calling to see what’s going on with the case.â€As a defense attorney and someone who wants to establish a good rapport and relationship with a client for both legal and business purposes, one has to have a lot of patience in fielding these phone calls. Based on attorney-client privilege there isn’t an over-abundance of things you can really tell family members without your client’s permission. You can cover a few generalized things such as how when the next court date is and how the Grand Jury system works, but the specifics of the case are something I’m not going to share without clearance from a client.As you can imagine, this can lead to frustration for those callers who don’t believe this adequately addresses “what’s going on with the case.†This usually results in them just having another relative call and ask the attorney the exact same questions.And they call. And call. And call. And call.I recently had a case where my answering service informed me that a defendant’s girlfriend had left eight messages during the day, each time letting me know it was “Urgent.†After finally calling her back (that same day, I might add), guess what she wanted. Yep. She just wanted to see what was going on with the case. I explained to my client the next day that he needed to ask his girlfriend not to call so much.“I know,†he said. â€My case probably isn’t as important as some of your others.â€Well, that made me feel terrible, but I quickly explained to him that there was a big difference between “important†and “urgent.†All of my cases are important to me, because they are important to my clients. If I didn’t think a case was important, I wouldn’t take it. That being said, not all cases at any given time are “urgent†and all attorneys (both prosecutors and defense attorneys) will have cases that are more urgent than others depending on the status of the case. A first degree felony case set for trial in a week requires urgent attention, where a client who is on bond for a misdemeanor theft charge who is on their second non-trial setting in court is a little less so, for instance.The over-active caller is at his or her most persistent once they realize they have gotten ahold of the attorney’s cell phone number. A private practitioner’s most utilized office supply is obviously the cell phone, and once a family member learns it, they own you.Every defense attorney has experienced the phenomenon of a client’s family member who will call, not leave a message, and then continue to call back until you answer the phone, as if repeated back-to-back phone calls will create a telephonic tractor beam that will pull you into answering your phone. These types of calls are doubtlessly the most exasperating of them all. Sadly, it is not unusual to find that the phone is telling you that you have twenty missed calls — all from the same phone number within a thirty minute period.I jokingly told a fellow defense attorney friend recently that I was going to leave the following message as my voice mail greeting:You have reached the Law Offices of Murray Newman. I am unable to answer your call at this time. Please leave your name and number and I will call you back as soon as possible. Please note that I am not in high school and I will NOT call you back just because I saw that you called on Caller I.D. If you want me to call you back, leave an actual message. Additionally, please do not call me back countless times. If you leave a message, I will call you back within 24 hours at the latest. However, if you keep calling me back repeatedly, I will add an additional 24 hours for every additional phone call before I even consider calling you back. Thank you and have a nice day.I haven’t quite gotten the nerve to do that yet.The fact of the matter is that defense attorneys do want to be empathetic and as informative as they can be to both their clients and their clients’ families, but at some point, we have to get some actual work done, too. Keeping one’s patience when getting those phone calls isn’t always easy.If this post seems like a random topic, it probably has a lot to do with the call I got on my cell phone at 5:45 a.m. this morning from a very sweet sounding lady, who woke me up:“Hi, this is Eddie’s grandmother,†she said. “I was just calling to see what was going on with his case.â€
JR is rubbing one out right now reading it. It's as good as a picture of feet and hairy twats.
How about hairy feet?
Do. Not. Post. any fucking pictures please. Feeling a little delicate this morning.
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