What I Learned from Robinson

-- By KatherineMackey - 16 Feb 2012

How I Read Lawyerland

I approached Law in Contemporary Society hoping to fill the hole left by Columbia’s career services: they focus on firm jobs and give lip-service to public interest, but they don’t talk about what else is out there and how to do it. This shaped the way that I did the readings for this class, particularly Lawyerland, which could be read as a long prose poem or an entertaining depiction of what it is like to work in the law. I was looking for lessons when I read Lawyerland, and that’s what I found. Reading this way has its drawbacks, because instead of seeing the wholeness of each character I was looking for what I could use and discarding the rest. Robinson is more complicated than my depiction of him suggests, but I want to discuss one thing I learned from reading about him, and why I think that lesson is particularly important.

Robinson’s experience with the Fujianese-Serbaian kid showed me one way to do justice as a lawyer: by making sure that your professional obligations to your client align with your broader obligation to society.

(I believe that every lawyer has a duty to make sure that justice is done in society and that this obligation is separate from a lawyer’s duty to represent their clients’ interests. When I mention justice or a just result, I am referring to any given lawyer’s idea of what that means, not a specific conception of it that I hold.)

Robinson’s Approach

Robinson sees the Fujianese-Serbian kid as a criminal who is not very culpable. He is dumb, has a father who cares more about reforming his character than helping him, and has a home life that does not seem to have made him into a functional adult. He’s also only twenty and has not grown out of his adolescent impulsiveness. All those mitigating factors weigh against the fact that he broke into a home while carrying an eight-inch switchblade. Robinson claims that the kid is “not really bad” –which is our only trustworthy moral evaluation of him, since we don’t know exactly why he was breaking into the house, or what he would have done if he hadn’t been caught. What this “not really bad” kid gets in return for his somewhat-bad-but-not-terrible crime is a beating by the AUSA plus a year in jail waiting for the trial, and any associated psychological stress. Maybe the sum total of his punishments is too harsh for the crime he committed, but the discrepancy is not too egregious. Robinson worked on his client’s behalf to make sure that he was only sentenced to time-served, which was the minimum sentence that the kid could have gotten and accords with Robinson’s moral judgment of the kid. In this case, he was able to align his broader duty to society to make sure that justice is done with his duty to represent his client’s interests.

Is There Another Way?

Though my reading of Robinson’s actions might be wrong, the way he structures his practice—specifically the fact that he can be picky about who he represents—means that he does not have to choose between promoting the best interests of his client and promoting what he believes is a just result. He can work as hard as necessary to get his clients’ punishments reduced as much as possible without feeling like he is helping culpable people get away with things they should not get away with.

I don’t think that many lawyers are consistently able to achieve this balance in their work. The best many lawyers can hope for when working for a large firm is to be working on disputes that don’t have very much relation to what is just—for example, an associate who works on litigation between banks resulting in a few cents per share to the shareholders of one institution or another. Prosecutors don’t have much choice in their cases, and their obligation is to vigorously protect the interests of the government, which will only coincidentally be related to doing justice in society. Most defense attorneys do not have the luxury of choosing clients in the same way that Robinson does, so they will often be working to keep bad people from the punishments that are the just result.

One potential response to this ethical dilemma, and one that is probably more common than Robinson’s, is to believe in the system rather than in your own idea of justice. In that case, you can see advocacy on behalf of your client as a necessary part of the system that you believe in, and shift the burden of deciding the justice or injustice of your client’s case to a judge or a jury. I don’t think that this is wrong, necessarily, although I do think what we have read in this class so far suggests that believing in the system instead of your own conception of justice is extremely risky. Furthermore, I’m not sure that trying to ignore your own ethical beliefs is a recipe for a satisfying or fulfilling career in the long term.

Why I Asked This Question

I came into law school wondering how I could strike this balance in my own career. My parents have jobs that are intellectually satisfying, remunerative enough, and socially beneficial; the fact that they know that their jobs improve the world is an essential part of why they find them satisfying. Their jobs are different from law because they are not representing clients; one of them works one-on-one with individuals, while the other works for an institution whose very existence is socially beneficial. Their example showed me what I need to look for in a job but did not show me how I could find it in law. Reading about Robinson showed me one way I could find what I’m looking for, even if he didn’t mean to.