In other words, I make the initial telephone conversation about the value and service I can provide to them. I gather only enough information to prepare for a productive first meeting. I then allow the in person meeting to go as long as needed to answer all the potential new client’s questions and fully explain the law and procedure involved in their case.

Back to the phone call. The reason it was a relatively long phone call was because the potential new client also contacted the public defender and wanted to know what I could provide that the public defender could not. This is a question that those of us practicing law in a private setting receive every once in a while, so I provided my usual but accurate response. After praising the public defender’s office for doing a fantastic job of representing their clients, I pointed out the limitations that a public defender has – namely time and resources. The other major concern that many people have when using a public defender is they have no control over who their attorney is.

This article, which I read this week, accurately characterizes the average day for many public defenders around the country, and illustrates the time and resources issue.

But the point of this post is really not to compare public defenders versus private attorneys – both have advantages and disadvantages. The point is to reflect on the life lessons that the article teaches. The fact is that public defenders have a huge caseload to manage, and they must learn to budget their time accordingly. Most do a great job, but it must be extremely stressful having all those files and knowing that there is only 12 minutes per client (probably not the same everywhere, but you get the idea). Professional happiness aside, this has to take a physical and mental toll on these fine attorneys.

Maybe I’m wrong, and I’ll get blasted by all the public defenders out there, but there has to be some way to confront this issue and alleviate some of the stress. Perhaps it’s more funding. Perhaps it’s more attorneys (which could come from more funding). But it certainly is not by making cuts.

Happy living,
Dave

~Franklin P. Jones

I purposely saved this foundation for last, because it is the most important. A lot of people say they don’t know what they would do without their families. I know exactly what I would do – fail miserably at life. For some reason, I was chosen to be one of the very lucky people who have a wonderful and supportive family. This has been true from my childhood through today, from my siblings to parents and beyond. And somehow I managed to convince my fantastic wife to marry me and now we have our son, who is the happiest little guy in the world.

In return for my good fortune, I make my family my number one priority. One of the lessons on life that I have learned is that there is nothing more important than a loving family, and I hope to pass that lesson on down to my kids. Yes I spend my days (and sometimes nights and weekends) practicing law, train for hours for whatever race I am doing and, just like everyone else, require some alone time every once in a while. All of these things take time away from my family. But I do all these things so I can enjoy my time with them, and so I can reach my ultimate goal – to be the best family man I can be.

The point of this post, and this blog for that matter, is not to tell everyone how to live their lives or that they should model their thinking after me. It is to get people thinking about the things that are important to them, while giving little anecdotes from my own personal experience, so that hopefully people can put their thoughts into action in their own lives.

In a completely unrelated subject, the Ironman Attorney fancies himself as a bit of a singer. A little known fact about me is that I was in the choir in high school, and even made a surprise appearance in one of the school musicals – with a lead part! But I’m certainly not even close to the cool that is Kevin Spacey: