I'm James. I went to law school to help people.

I would never. Criminal-defense is the only type of law I've ever wanted to practice. During law school, I volunteered at public defender offices. My first job after law school was as a public defender.

 

I still think about the people who I had the privilege to meet doing that work: the single mother who walked into court thinking she was just going to pay a few tickets, then got thrown in jail for a year after a sham trial where she was denied a lawyer (I successfully appealed and got her out), the innocent man who sat in pretrial detention for over a year facing a life sentence (whose girlfriend on the outside paid thousands of dollars to a disbarred attorney before I was appointed), the man whose artwork hangs on my office wall today who was homeless for years and probably had dozens of public defenders before me and after me.

 

It was hard to leave that job when I moved to South Carolina, but I hung a shingle and continued to practice criminal-defense, this time on my own in private practice, and that's all I've done since.

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I do this work because it's what I care about. If I wasn't doing it, I'd be up at night wondering how it was going to get done. I love my clients and understand that the dim, blurry snapshot the criminal court system takes of them in their most vulnerable moments never shows the full picture of who they are. I get mad when the system mistreats people, and I lose sleep over the wrongful convictions of people I've never met (and the people I have met). 

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If you need a lawyer who does this work so they can pay their country club membership dues and put their kids through private school, then maybe I'm not a good fit for you.

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But if you need a lawyer who firmly believes that the criminal court system is slanted too far in favor of the government and that it creates more problems than it solves, then I would love to talk to you.

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If you need to read my resume, I have a Linkedin profile for that. But I think you've probably read this far because you are trying to get to know the person behind the attorney you might choose to hire to help you or a loved one. If so, the one thing I want to make sure you know is that every day, from beginning to end, there's one question on my mind: 

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What more can I do today to help my clients?