2 - The Lawyer as Client Defender

Summary

Former U.S. President Donald Trump used nearly $700,000 in campaign funds to pay the lawyers who defended him at his second impeachment trial, according to filings with the Federal Election Committee. Apparently Trump’s campaign committee, since renamed Make America Great Again, paid $580,000 to the Philadelphia law firm of Michael van der Veen and Bruce Castor and another $100,000 to a third impeachment defense lawyer from Alabama, David Schoen. Trump was acquitted along party lines, but a few Republican senators joined Democrats in voting to convict Donald Trump (Yaffe-Bellany, 2021).

The wide variety of clients for lawyers as defenders might be illustrated by Donald Trump versus Li Zhuang in China. For many Chinese criminal lawyers, Enshen (2010) argued that legal practice is not only difficult but also dangerous. Li Zhuang was a successful lawyer who specialized in the defense of violent criminal cases. Li was suddenly arrested and convicted to prison. There was little his defense lawyer could do because of the formal and informal limits on the ability of lawyers to represent clients. There are certain political, ideological, and institutional frameworks that play critical roles in the deterioration of criminal defense lawyers’ working environment in China (Yuan, 2021).

1. ALLIED DEFENSE KNOWLEDGE WORK

Newman and Ugwudike (2014) phrased the question as defense lawyers and probation officers: offenders’ allies or adversaries? They argued that any relationship between defender and defendant can go awry, especially since it is frequently characterized by an inbuilt discrepancy in power, such as that between an elite professional and a suspected offender, with the latter so heavily reliant and dependent on the former. The researchers found that defense lawyers do not act as effective allies for their clients. The lawyers failed to meet public service ideals and professional standards, and, as such, cannot be considered effective allies.

Pivaty et al. (2020) studied contemporary criminal defense practice. They found a shifting focus of criminal proceedings from the trial to the pre-trial stages that leads to a changing role of criminal defense practitioners. Criminal defense lawyers are expected to enter the proceedings earlier and exercise active and participatory defense as early as the investigative stage.