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Comment by drtillberg | Hacker News Reader

> I had picked the [trial] date, not the judge, [to coincide with my kid's seventh birthday] because I knew that the other side wasn’t ready. Delaying even a few days would have meant losing a crucial advantage. I wasn’t going to risk it knowing what was on the line for my client.

I would just like to say that picking the most inconvenient time for all counsel involved is one of those tactics you see in the practice of law too often. And for what? So all the lawyers can miss every major holiday, and their kids birthdays? To make the other lawyers beg for the time off everyone else takes for granted? The article-writer lost me on this one, and I'm sad to see this person is a professor teaching this same toolkit of antisocial tactics to the next generation of lawyers.

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Call me extremely naive but I thought the point of a trial was to expose all the facts and give both sides ample time to do so, not to try to win over a "crucial advantage" by playing games. Seems like bad ethics in addition to bad parenting.

Oh boy you should not ever go into a legal situation with that perspective. It's about gaming every possible advantage.

The justice system is less justice, more system.

She doesn't mention the subject of that particular trial, but the previous example makes the stakes of her work clear: overturning wrongful murder convictions to get innocent people out of jail. Missing a birthday seems a worthy tradeoff.

How does she know they are innocent if she is actively sabotaging the state's efforts research and prepare the evidence?

Why do you suspect she acted in bad faith, and assume that the state is acting in good faith?

It seemed rather strongly arguable that 1) she takes cases she is passionate about 2) she seems to deal with cases where the state was abusive.

It isn't an assumption, it is what she clearly stated: "because I knew that the other side wasn’t ready".

What prosecutor is going to be caught flat-footed on a high stakes trial? None. One of two things happened: the prosecutor pulled a bunch of all-nighters to prepare ... or else ... was just going through the motions would not have prepared extensively if given another 40 years to do so.

I get that sometimes we all have to roll out of bed early to serve a client's interest, but I also think it was clearer with the generation of lawyers that started in the 60s and 70s that in the mine run of administrative and scheduling issues, jamming attorneys like this does not generate a substantive advantage and, as one local luminary would have said, 'generates heat, not light.'

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