cuthman99

Other things to think about (doing this on mobile while waiting for a witness to show up, sorry for formatting):

1. If the person you meet with for your consultation can't promise that s/he will be the attorney handling your case personally, don't sign in until you meet that individual. Shady operators have 'sales' attorneys, essentially, or have a lead attorney do the consultation and then farm a lot of the work out. It's less common than it used to be, but be aware.

2. Sometimes the difference between several qualified attorneys is just your rapport with that individual. That counts for more than people might guess. You just need to be able to really listen to this person, and hear their advice, during what can be extremely tough, high pressure circumstances. Rapport makes a difference at a crisis point, it really does. Much more of a difference than a couple of years' experience, let's say, or a marginal difference in cost.

3. If you're relying on other people for financial help, try not to let those folks make the decision as to who represents you, if that's at all possible. Easier said than done. But if you meet with three lawyers, and you like one better, and your family member who's helping pay likes the other, don't roll over. And if you're the family member, try to be respectful of the preference the person in trouble expresses... see above.

4. No, you and the buddy you got arrested with shouldn't pool resources and find one lawyer to represent both of you. Most lawyers will refuse to do so on ethical grounds. But if you keep shopping around, eventually some jackass will agree to it. You don't want that. Really.

There's more but apparently the witness decided to show, gotta do a hearing.

I don't think there's any way to generalize in answer to that- there's no trend, in my experience. I've known former prosecutors who were awesome defense attorneys and some others who were crap; it's not really any different than the general population of defense attorneys.

I have an incredibly high-trauma-exposure career and am pretty consistently worried about the burnout which often comes from working in my field. I'm lucky to have access to therapy and a supportive workplace where mental health is valued. But I'm kind of feeling like... I don't know. I talk to a therapist virtually once a week. It feels open-ended and kind of aimless sometimes.

Should there be therapy "goals" in a situation like this? The work I do certainly never stops churning, and I feel like the therapy is prophylactic as much as anything, but...

Thank you for answering. I'll push my luck and ask for some follow-up:

Re: 1. You state,

"So in the end, the decision is based on the training, experience, and expertise of the examiner (just like many other fields from botany to death investigation). The follow-up question is then, 'How accurate are you at this decision?" Short answer - very.'"

Would it be fair, then, to conclude that you disagree with the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council assertion that as a fundamental matter,

"All results for every forensic science method should indicate the uncertainty in the measurements that are made, and studies must be conducted that enable the estimation of those values,"

and that simply asserting that simply relying on a single examiner's 'experience and training' to give a decidedly qualitative description of certainty/error rates is unacceptable? Rather, in order to actually be considered a science (as opposed to, say, an art, or just an investigative technique developed and used exclusively by cops/prosecutors, not true science), it is necessary to, as they put it, "acknowledg[e] that there can be uncertainties in this process," and going forward "the concept of 'uniquely associated with' must be replaced with a probabilistic association"?

I guess the fundamental gist of this would be: the fingerprint analysis community has generally insisted that the work it does must by needs be subjective, i.e., rely on the 'training and experience' of a particular individual examiner to make many particularized judgement calls... whereas science, by definition, abhors that sort of subjectivity. The National Academies have strenuously urged that any reliance on a subjective system is always going to be flawed and un-scientific, and the analysts have pushed back against this, hard. Would you like to comment on that tension?

Thank you! And yes, I should be more precise-- there's a lot of vicarious trauma in my world, and that's more of the issue, though burnout simply from the work/stress load is real too. But regardless, thank you for this helpful reply, and for the work you do. It's so important!