This is the third and final week of guest columnists.  Batting today is a return visit  by Harry K.

Representation of a divorce client: $20,000

Representation of a large company in a contractual dispute: $200,000

Representation of a poor person accused of a crime: Priceless.

I’m  often  asked, “How can you represent someone you know is guilty?” and “Why do it when it doesn’t even make you rich?”  For the record, I am very rich, rich in the incalculable rewards that come from representing the very poor.

There have been times that I haven’t had enough change in my pocket to buy coffee.  But I always knew there was going to be more money coming.  Those of us who always had a roof over our heads cannot imagine the skills, the resourcefulness, the tenacity, the sheer will that it takes to survive POOR.  When medical, mental health, or addiction problems are added to the picture, some of us might become judgmental.  But when you meet a real human being, when you touch, smell, hear, listen and talk to them, it’s impossible not to want to translate your brief moments together into an opportunity for them to make a life better than the one they are living.

It’s really all about power.  Maybe you’ve felt the powerlessness of being unable to relieve a loved one’s pain, or not being believed when telling the truth.  Now imagine that you had the power to relieve that pain or to persuade that doubter.  That’s what it feels like to represent a poor person.

Take my Haitian immigrant client in the lockup last week.  The mother of his two kids claimed that he’d pushed and choked her after having too much to drink.  He got arrested and she got a restraining order, so he had to scramble for another place to live. When he sent her a text to see if he could visit the kids, she called the police and he was arrested again for violating the restraining order.  Time passed, the kids clamored to see their dad, so she invited him over.  They argued again, she called the police again, and he got arrested again.  I’m seeing him in the lockup because his bail has been revoked.

He’s been brought to court for trial about the pushing and choking that started it all.  He is in the U.S. legally, but could suffer any number of immigration consequences if found guilty.

Some might think: he shouldn’t have put his hands on her, or what an idiot he was to have texted her and gone over there.  Some people think, send him back to Haiti.

But I think about him in jail.  He can’t see or call his kids.  The only pictures he has of them are on the phone that was confiscated.  He can make only collect calls, and only to those people whose numbers he actually remembers–a job his phone used to do.  If his cellmate is a screamer, there’s no spare room.  He has lost the hourly rate paying job that took him months to find.  He is powerless.  I am the only force in the world that can help him change his situation.

So I do.  Will he stop drinking too much?  Will he be able to spend more time with his kids?  Will he control his anger?  Will he get another job?  These questions are his to answer, but at least I can help him to regain the possibility of power over his future.

Are some of my clients guilty?  Of course.  And some are not.  John Adams once said: “It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished.  But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, ‘whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,’ and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.”

Guilty or innocent, my clients are people with problems on a scale that most of us cannot understand.  Imagine wondering how you’re going to find a place to sleep for the night.  Every night.  Imagine being branded a sex offender for the rest of your life for having sex with a fifteen year old girl when you were eighteen and her parents involved the police.  Imagine seeing the look in people’s eyes who believe you to be a criminal because of your skin color.  Imagine being presumed to be guilty.

There are injustices to right, and power to be kept balanced.  That’s why I look forward to seeing my clients every day.

“Power must never be trusted without a check.” ― John Adams