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Comment by psutor | Hacker News Reader

The article expects you to know that $125/hr is way below the normal rate for a criminal defense attorney in a major city, which I would expect to start at about $300/hr.

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I'm a very well paid software engineer.. I apparently can't afford to hire a qualified defender if I find myself in need. I figure a defense is a minimum of 500 hours, so even at $300 that's $150,000. I have no idea where I get that type of money from.

Our justice system is severely screwed.

A 500 hour billing for defense would be pretty serious, so if that's going to be a problem for you here's a heads-up to ixnay on the crime you're committing that's going to require brand-new Supreme Court-favorable legal theories for acquittal. That's over 3 months of 40-hour weeks dedicated to just your case. I know lawyers bill like crazy, but still.

Avoiding crime isn't really an effective way to avoid needing a lawyer, unfortunately.

I wasn't trying to account for all crime everywhere, because after all there are cases of mistaken/misattributed identity that are very time-consuming to defend, but all in all it's a very good way to avoid 500 hours of lawyer.

That price is just for the lawyers time too, there's many other costs like billing for photo copies, calls, court fees, couriers to deliver registered mail, everything is charged unless quoted a flat fee from a McLawyer.

500 hours is a lot of defender time. However, I suspect this is yet another reason so many innocent people plea bargain vs going to trial.

Seems there is market for insurance product.

"Our justice system is severely screwed."

If the purpose of a justice system is to tranquilize the people with the false idea they'll have justice, so no need for rebellion or revolution, and only a "small percentage" learn the truth via experience, I'm not seeing a problem here, as long as the general public doesn't get to talk with each other only be preached to by a couple mega corporations. Oh that internet thing, we hates it. As a PR technique for oppression it seems to work pretty well so far, yes?

"I'm a very well paid software engineer.. I apparently can't afford to hire a qualified defender if I find myself in need. I figure a defense is a minimum of 500 hours, so even at $300 that's $150,000. I have no idea where I get that type of money from.

Our justice system is severely screwed."

The lawyers have a cushy government-aided monopoly. You can't "practice" law if you don't have have BAR approval from the lawyer priesthood. And they've been slowly increasing the difficulty for people to enter the field. It's nigh impossible to know law sufficiently well to defend yourself/someone else (even if they allowed you), yet that is precisely the situation that is created and enforced.

And we all know what happens when supply is restricted: the existing players increase their prices because you have to use them if you don't want to go to jail (a.k.a. government-funded rape rooms); there is simply no alternative.

Lawyers are the new priesthood of the state. Please, wake up.

It doesn't seem to be getting harder to pass the bar in the U.S. In 2000, 72,704 bar examinations were taken, with 47,160 passing, ~65%. In 2013, 83,986 exams were taken, with 57,026 passing, ~68%. Those are the yearly totals, I guess they include people taking the exam twice.

I got the numbers here:

http://www.ncbex.org/publications/statistics/

I picked those 2 years just because, I didn't look at any other years.

My read of that was that it's inefficient for the government to pay one person 5 * $125 / hour to keep another government employee from getting access to information that could have been transmitted, read, and responded to in a matter of minutes.

and $300/hr is for the medium ones. If you're looking at serious time and have the resources, you're probably paying $500+ for an attorney experienced in criminal defense trials and your type of claimed lawbreaking.

While a client might balk at paying 5 billable hours for a jailhouse visit to answer a single question, would a public defender face any career risk from billing the state as such?

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