Vacation's end
I had a nice, relaxing week, doing next to nothing and I'm feeling pretty well recharged.
I think that, in this line of business, it's particularly important to get away from time to time. Criminal defense lawyers, and especially public defenders, really need to monitor burn-out. The clients can be demanding, the judges can be demanding, the prosecutors can be demanding, and the caseload is demanding. Generally speaking, we've become public defenders because we want to serve the public, and it's hard to do that when we don't care about our client's best interests.
I was just disucssing this with a colleague today over lunch. He hasn't had a real vacation in a year and a half. He just went up to felony court a couple of months back, which is a different world altogether. I told him that it's necessary to get away, I think, just to decompress. Vacation becomes a win-win situation, then for us and for the clients, because we returned reinvigorated.
This week is devoted exclusively to appointments, which is kind of fun, and then the next two weeks are trial. I didn't pay attention after calendar call the week before last, but I just realized that my trials start next week, including 4 on Monday. Luckily, these are all cases that have been on the trial calendar once, so I have already done 95% of the prep. Unfortunately, the cases' age drops as the week goes on, as does the prep level. I haven't done a full count, but I'm guessing that I have over 30 cases set for trial.
Woohoo! It's good to be back!
PS: I did take my files with me, but they never made it out of the back of the car. Isn't that always the way?
I think that, in this line of business, it's particularly important to get away from time to time. Criminal defense lawyers, and especially public defenders, really need to monitor burn-out. The clients can be demanding, the judges can be demanding, the prosecutors can be demanding, and the caseload is demanding. Generally speaking, we've become public defenders because we want to serve the public, and it's hard to do that when we don't care about our client's best interests.
I was just disucssing this with a colleague today over lunch. He hasn't had a real vacation in a year and a half. He just went up to felony court a couple of months back, which is a different world altogether. I told him that it's necessary to get away, I think, just to decompress. Vacation becomes a win-win situation, then for us and for the clients, because we returned reinvigorated.
This week is devoted exclusively to appointments, which is kind of fun, and then the next two weeks are trial. I didn't pay attention after calendar call the week before last, but I just realized that my trials start next week, including 4 on Monday. Luckily, these are all cases that have been on the trial calendar once, so I have already done 95% of the prep. Unfortunately, the cases' age drops as the week goes on, as does the prep level. I haven't done a full count, but I'm guessing that I have over 30 cases set for trial.
Woohoo! It's good to be back!
PS: I did take my files with me, but they never made it out of the back of the car. Isn't that always the way?
posted by swd at 6:42 PM
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