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Nope. I can spot a phony lawyer a mile away.My first job after I graduated from law school was as a law clerk to a federal trial judge. For four years, my primary job duty was to review all of the written documents that had been filed in connection with pending litigation — pleadings, motions, etc. — to summarize the parties’ arguments in a memorandum to the judge, and to recommend a disposition.I have read thousands of motions along with their supporting memoranda. Most of these documents were drafted by attorneys. Some of them were drafted by unrepresented parties. When a motion hit my desk, I never bothered to check in advance whether the person who wrote it was an attorney or an unrepresented party. I never had to. The legal memoranda written by unrepresented parties were so glaringly different from the ones written by trained attorneys that I usually caught them by the time I had finished reading the first paragraph. I can’t recall a single instance when an unrepresented party escaped my notice for more than a page or two.In four years, I made only one mistake. I do recall one case in which I mistook a remarkably incompetent attorney for a pro se plaintiff. I never made a mistake in the opposite direction.Also, in the United States it’s incredibly easy to find out whether someone is actually admitted to the practice of law or not. All you have to do is go to the state bar association’s website and type in the person’s name. It takes less than a minute to check.Here’s what you will find if you go to the California State Bar website and type in my name:

Without knowing any details, my initial impression is that your attorney is doing his job.One of the differences between the worst lawyer in town and the best lawyer in town is that the worst lawyer will listen to your side of the case, immediately put on a suit of armor, and jump on his white horse without going to the trouble of asking himself whether there might be any weaknesses in your case. The best lawyer in town, on the other hand, conducts a complete analysis of the case from the perspective of both sides and actively looks for potential weaknesses before he jumps on the white horse.Another difference between the worst lawyer in town and the best lawyer in town is that the best lawyer engages in a process lawyers call managing the client’s expectations. If your own expectations about the possible outcome of trial are unrealistic, she’ll give you a reality check.Think about it this way. Imagine that you’re on an athletic team and your goal is to win the championship. Do you want a coach who stands on the sidelines and cheers for everything you do, no matter what? Or do you want a coach who keeps an eye out for weaknesses so that you can correct them? Do you want a coach who never pays any attention to the opposing team’s strengths? Or do you want a coach who insists on a thorough scouting report? If you want to win the championship, you hire a coach who is capable of evaluating your team’s weaknesses and the opposing team’s strengths. Otherwise, you’re getting only half of the picture.Story #1:Several years ago, I needed a lawyer to represent me in a litigation matter. After I explained my side of the story at the initial consultation, the first thing my lawyer said was, “What would your opponent say if I asked him for his side of the story?”I took the lawyer’s question as a good sign and hired her on the spot. Her question demonstrated that she was the kind of lawyer who knew how to look at both sides of the case.Story #2:The first significant writing assignment I got when I was in my first semester of law school was an assignment to prepare a written trial brief for a hypothetical client, addressing a specific legal issue. I spent weeks researching the governing law and how it applied to the facts of my client’s case. Ultimately, I wrote a 15-page legal brief, raising the strongest arguments I could think of for why my client should win.Writing assignment #2 involved the same set of facts. For writing assignment #2, I had to argue the exact same legal issue, except that I was representing the opposite side.The second writing assignment proved to be an invaluable lesson in the value of preparing a case from the perspective of the opposing party. By looking at the case through the eyes of the opposing party, I understood the strengths and weaknesses of that side of the case far better than I would have if I had looked at the case only through the eyes of one side.

“What is the funniest trial for a serious crime you’ve witnessed?”The defendant, a highly educated professional with an upper-six-figure income, had not paid a penny of income tax for several years. By the time the IRS caught up with him, he owed a ridiculous amount of money in back taxes and was facing several years of incarceration.The defendant had refused to hire a lawyer, preferring instead to represent himself. (He had no legal training at all.) For over a month, he was probably the most belligerent, uncooperative defendant I ever saw. Among other things, he had filed a series of motions to dismiss in which he raised one frivolous challenge after another to the sufficiency of the indictment against him.The judge had scheduled a hearing, which was to be conducted in open court, for one afternoon immediately after lunch.At noon on that same day, the defendant filed his umpteenth motion to dismiss the indictment. The motion was an obvious delaying tactic. Anyone with the sense of a turtle could predict that the defendant planned to walk into the courtroom the first thing after lunch and say, “I have filed a motion to dismiss that has not yet been served on the prosecutor. I move for a continuance so that the prosecutor will have an opportunity to respond to my motion and the Court can issue a ruling on it.”At the hearing, the judge gave this man a lesson in how courts treat obvious delaying tactics by criminal defendants.The judge opened the hearing: “Before we get to the business originally scheduled for the day, the defendant has filed a motion that has to be addressed.”The prosecutor jumped up, in shock: “Your honor, we haven’t received —”The judge interrupted her with a wave of his hand.And then he read, from the bench, an eleven-page opinion and order denying the defendant’s motion to dismiss the indictment.The defendant sat there like a statue while the judge listed each argument the defendant had presented in his motion, and explained why each argument lacked merit.Members of the media were also present, and they heard every frivolous argument the defendant had tried to make. When the judge got to, “The defendant claims that Ohio is not located in the United States,” one of the reporters laughed audibly.The defendant quickly decided to hire a lawyer.