6

We Have Opinions at Our Own Peril

AndreyPopov/iStock/Getty Images

The Legal Services Corporation is a massive nonprofit set up by the federal government to administer all legal aid funding. Our funding is stretched incredibly thin -- we literally turn down one person for every person we help. There's an office in the LSC called the inspector general, whose job is to monitor legal service programs that might be breaking the rules. Because of political fuckery, a lot of those rules prohibit things like having any sort of political opinion. Like this federal investigation conducted because somebody took a vacation day to go protest. Their program fired that employee -- for protesting on their own time -- rather than risk an investigation that could cost them their funding.

Our funding has either stayed stagnant or been cut over the past 20 years, yet the inspector general's funding has increased. So now the office assigned to find trouble in the program is better funded than the program itself. Can you guess how much trouble they find?

Keith Brofsky/Photodisc/Getty Images
"Turns out you guys don't have enough money; that's a double-fine."

5

Sometimes We Suffer From Compassion Fatigue

Photodisc/Photodisc/Getty Images

Social workers, EMTs, and anyone whose job is to flit about from one person's nightmare to another's on a daily basis can suffer from a mental condition called "compassion fatigue." It's not just the politically correct term for an asshole -- it's a real thing. Eventually, all the empathy and idealism that got you into this career washes out, leaving you a spiteful shadow of your former self. It hit me hard a few years ago. I was in court with somebody, a totally devastating day in their life -- that client lost their kids, I think, I still can't really recall because that's how often I see parents lose their kids. Anyway, I remember that all I could think about was how badly I wanted a soda.

USGirl/iStock/Getty Images
"No, vending machine, you're out of order!"

Every day you hear stories like, "My ex-husband beat me so bad I need reconstructive surgery." Hardly anybody walks in saying, "My life is awesome and I need a free lawyer to help me high-five panda bears all day." They come to you on the worst day of their life. You deal with that day in and day out. And you have to compartmentalize. One box for the part of you that tells some weeping mother the best you can do is get her visitation rights, and another box that's capable of empathizing with a friend who just had their car towed. There's a risk of taking that too far, and eventually you wind up falling into the Fucks Donation Box, which is tragically empty.

4

Sometimes Innocent People Have to Plead Guilty

LOU OATES/iStock/Getty Images

This lady very nearly pled guilty to meth possession because the police found a spoon with a red substance in her purse. She claimed it was SpaghettiOs residue. Haha, those crazy meth-heads and their excuses! She sat in jail for 30 days, almost taking a plea bargain to get out. Finally, the lab results came back: SpaghettiOs. She came dangerously close to taking that plea bargain, though, at which point she would have been guilty of meth possession for having shitty taste in pasta.

Fun fact: the legal standard for disorderly conduct is "you being loud/violent/disturbing enough in a public place that somebody feels the need to call the cops." You can be whistling Chumbawamba on the sidewalk -- not technically a crime, even if it should be -- but if a neighbor thinks you're too loud, that may be "disorderly conduct." The cops bring you in, and maybe disorderly conduct gets tacked on to a lot of bigger charges -- "inciting a riot, getting that damn song stuck in our heads all day, and disorderly conduct."

Doug Menuez/Photodisc/Getty
Singing "Let It Go" can be a Class 2 felony.

3

Sometimes We Can't Win, so We Just Try to Lose by Less

BartekSzewczyk/iStock/Getty Images

Lawyers tend to know ahead of time when we're going to lose. A lot of our cases are losers. Somebody's getting evicted because they bought a bouncy castle instead of paying rent? Understandable, but we can't stop the consequences. All we can do is look for technical glitches from the landlord -- not to win the case at that point but to stop someone who lives on $600 a month from getting hit with $5,000 in utility back-fees. It's maybe not a win, but it's less of a loss. That's not nothing, and some days the not-nothings are all that get you through to quitting time.

Stockbyte/Stockbyte/Getty Images
"So you're going to have to do five years, but the judge promised you'll have a Morgan Freeman-esque cellmate."

This turns into a form of moral algebra -- arguably the worst kind of algebra, which I realize is like saying shower farts are the worst kind of farts. Say that Person A has a legal problem. With X hours of work, we can moderate Person A's problem to a point where it is survivable. Call that Point S. If we double X -- the man hours we put into the case -- we can improve A's return to S plus one. Is that extra time worth it, for such a minimal gain? I would love to say that we are always able to put in that time, but we have new clients coming in constantly and a finite amount of resources. Sometimes you just have to deal with the aerosolized shower fart of life.

2

Yes, Money Does Equal Justice

loongar/iStock/Getty Images

The rules for attorneys vary from state to state, but the law generally suggests that we donate some of our time to pro bono work for needy clients. Helping the unfortunate for free should be a part of every lawyer's duty ... in the fantasy world lawmakers live in, where hugs are currency and everybody rides a pegasus to work.

Here's how it works in reality: lawyers donate free services, true -- but to the people and organizations that benefit them. It's not at all uncommon for big-name attorneys and firms to work pro bono with a city's symphony. I'm sure the musicians appreciate it, but the lawyers also get the benefit of free advertising and schmoozing with the sort of people who fund and attend symphonies. Generally not the barter-with-pre-packaged-noodles crowd. Other lawyers provide free aid to banks, while the people too poor to technically qualify for a bank account go completely unrepresented.

Brand X Pictures/Stockbyte/Getty
"But how could banks ever get cash to pay lawyers? Have you seen the ATM fees we charge?"

The "justice gap" has become wide enough that for every one legal aid lawyer there are more than 6,000 poor people who need their services. Most of my clients are elderly people on fixed incomes or the disabled. And those people surely need help, but so do single moms and dads. The trouble is, single parents working two jobs to barely scrape by still have income too high (they're rolling in over $1,100 a month!) to qualify for free services. So you're poor enough to need a free lawyer but make too much to qualify for one. Maybe try selling off that solid gold yacht, family surviving on $14,000 a year.

1

It's Illegal to Help the People Who Need Us Most

ruchos/iStock/Getty Images