That is more or less what Cosby said! And no, that doesn’t make it bad to defend Cosby because his statement is just another piece of evidence that needs to be weighed and doesn’t actually necessarily mean he’s guilty of anything.
The work is just different in nature. Corporate lawyers shielding shareholders from liability and costs and taxes is one thing. Like you’re spending your life making sure Bezos doesn’t pay any taxes and making half a million dollars a year. I’m sure other corporate work is not morally objectionable, it just depends. But that’s very different from making sure that the state has to actually prove its case against a criminal client. I’m saying the latter can basically never be wrong, it’s inherently noble and benefits society. Even more so with the way defense attorneys are smeared in popular media as scumbags.
But yes, if Kaytal was actually trying to prove that the allegations are untrue and that slavery Isn’t Even A Thing anymore, that is less objectionable for sure. Probably even not objectionable at all. But he’s not trying to do that because, you know, they are true.
I guess what’s irritating isn’t that Neal Katyal took the case, there will always be smart people willing to sell out, it’s that he’s plastered all over MSNBC as a Very Serious Liberal and gets to prance around elite liberal circles like he’s some kind of friend to progressives. Fuck that, the absolute worst kind of “liberal.”
OK, that seems reasonable. So it’s not “individual criminal defense good, corporate criminal defense bad,” it’s more about the type of defense they’re putting up and the facts of the case? Seems to make sense to me.
say you are a hot-shot lawyer on retainer for Evil Corp LLC, and everything goes well until Evil biz practices kills 100k people. nay 100k children. isn’t it the lawyer’s job to advise the client, “you gotta own up here. there’s no defense that’s going to make you look good. i’m not walking out there with a chewbacca defense.” ?
sure, evil corp may reply, “i’d like to fuck around, and not find out. go out there and say child slavery is ok because we weren’t aware of it when we opened a facility on tropical island.” are you saying corp lawyer isn’t (in theory) ethically required to quit?
They didn’t take the big time job with Nestle for ethical reasons, they don’t “have” to quit for ethical reasons. They took the big time job with Nestle to get paid, son, and they are. Their job is to minimize liability for whatever bad stuff the company is doing, it isn’t moral or immoral it’s just amoral. Nobody took the job with Nestle because they deeply believe in the corporate mission of the place. Everyone there is there for the same reason: getting paid a bunch of money. So there’s no reason to equate the morality of Nestle defending a slavery lawsuit to criminal defense attorneys, many of whom do that work a least partly because they do deeply believe in the necessity of what they do and that it is an essential service to society. Because it is.
And if the Nestle lawyers lose no one goes to jail, the company just has a little less money and has to do business in a way that will maybe earn them a little less money. They need those little child slave hands to polish the cocoa beans I guess, it’s important.
I just listened to this podcast and I think (?) I end up on Keeed’s side here. At least, I definitely didn’t follow the podcast argument. My interpretation of the argument was:
Of course everyone should be entitled to a vigorous defense. (I don’t think there was any hint they meant this was true for individuals but not corporations.)
Of course people like Katyal should be shamed for defending Nestle.
Those seem incompatible? Why not just say “Of course lawyers should be shamed and deterred from representing heinous acts/individuals/companies. And if that means that heinous individuals/companies have to settle for a smaller pool of lawyers, so be it - they deserve it.”
There’s a fundamental difference between the state trying to put a criminal defendant in prison and trying to let the shareholders of Nestle make a little bit more money. So if there’s some Nestle middle manager out there buying slaves or whatever then I would never criticize his lawyer for defending him in his criminal case.
Now what about defending Nestle for the exact same act? Part of the the rationale for defending the work that criminal defense attorneys do is that the power differential between the state and a man charged with a crime is so vast. Obviously that’s true for average people but it is also true for the wealthy. Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay were wealthy, powerful men but their power was dwarfed by that of the state once it decided to prosecute them. Does that same power imbalance exist in the Nestle slavery lawsuit? It does not, and in fact is reversed. Nestle will never have anything but the very best legal representation and anyone trying to sue them will face a huge uphill battle. Just like any criminal defendant. And there’s less at stake, to boot: Nestle has the deck stacked in their favor and stand to lose less than a criminal defendant. Nestle loses and they lose some money. The Nestle Slaving Manager goes to prison.
So Nestle never will have to deal with a significantly smaller pool of lawyers to minimize their bad acts. What’s the argument for not making fun of the amoral lawyers who defend them?
This is all fine, but then why claim that Nestle is entitled to vigorous defense in both civil and criminal actions? (That’s how I interpreted Rhiannon on the podcast, but maybe that’s not what she was saying.)
Just say that you think corporations shouldn’t be entitled to the best defense in civil actions, the way they are in criminal actions. That seems more consistent with the view that you should shame the amoral lawyers who defend them.
It just seems bizarre to simultaneously claim that:
Some group (maybe just criminal defendants or maybe all civil and criminal defendants) is entitled to a strong legal defense regardless of the nature of the alleged actions.
We should absolutely shame the lawyers who defend that group.
Edit: I’m not opposed to the shaming of the lawyers. I just think the simultaneous argument doesn’t make sense. But that seems like it might be a me issue.
yeah but this doesn’t seem relevant to the issue of representing an individual vs. a corporation.
I guess maybe this would be a clarifying question, is Jeff Bezos more deserving of representation than Amazon Inc if the case is “ceo personally did crimes against warehouse workers”?
I think this is what I’m probably wondering about, is the actual distinction for Civil vs. Criminal? E.g. I think everyone agrees Bill Cosby should have a lawyer for criminal cases, and we don’t want to shame those lawyers, and it’s in society’s interest that he be able to retain representation for criminal charges.
Do people have the same opinion about this if we’re talking about Bill Cosby and the same essential acts, but from a civil liabilty/tort point of view?
I agree, it doesn’t make sense at all. I don’t care about shaming of corporate lawyers for representing asshole clients because it’s a purely amoral transaction that is just about cash money for all sides. I do care about shaming defense attorneys for representing the very worst criminals because they’re filling a vital role in society. And the defense attorney shaming is likely to be more effective in chilling the representation pool because who wants to represent Harvey Weinstein. Or any rapist. Or any murderer.
That seems less problematic because the power imbalance between Cosby and his victims is less than Cosby and the state. And the consequences are less, like with Nestle it’s just money. Although not quite like Nestle because it’ll probably be all of Cosby’s money.
But again, who gets more flack, the criminal defense lawyers who got OJ free or his lawyers who shielded his pension or whatever other civil stuff went down? The Dream Team ainec.