Personal Statement L. Jones

If you laid all of the lawyers in the world, end to end, on the equator - It would be a good idea to just leave them there. -Unknown

Ah yes, the lawyer -- the bane of civilized society as we know it -- the definition of self serving duplicity, concerned with the almighty dollar far more than facilitating the wheels of justice in their ever-toiling task. Indeed, the lawyer has come to represent all that is wrong in American society, from dishonesty to abject greed.

Even for my mother, kind hearted and trusting as she is, a visit to an attorney, or worse, a visit from an attorney, was cause for significant distress, distrust, and outright fear -- after all, she hardly had good experiences with the her attorney.

Again and again, as parents will often do, my mother would tell my sister and I the story how her lawyer had "taken her money" without helping her -- how he had not prepared for the case in which she requested more child support from my well-to-do father. She would also tell me how he had instructed her to "look professional" for the judge, so that she might give "a good impression."

My father, on the other hand, perhaps due to his greater financial resources, seemed to have a different kind of attorney, the kind who actually prepared for court, as well as seemed to have some grasp of what he was doing. You see, according to my mother, while she made her best showing in professional attire (no matter that she worked the night shift in a grocery store and purchased her getup at Goodwill), my father, who was at the time living in style with his new mistress, showed up in a faded work shirt and threadbare blue jeans. As my mother tells it, she went home without the child...

First, that her attorney had given her obviously horrible advice, second, that money did seem to buy better legal outcomes, and finally, that a judge could be so blind as to accept appearances over substance. I wondered how anyone could fail to see how desperately my mother need the money to take care of us, and how my father, living in relative luxury, had the means to spare.
A also remember later, after we had grown, how my sister, in the tie-dye and Birkenstock phase of her life, saw her shall we say, farming, activities abruptly halted by the very busy Canadian drug enforcement authorities. This time, my mother would be prepared.

At first represented by a public defender, my sister found herself flown in shackles aboard a float plane over the beautiful British Colombia landscape, uncharacteristically denied bail (highly unusual for her offence and the area), and left to await her court appearance in the local provincial women's penitentiary.

In response, my mother, galvanized by her previous experience with the law, and acutely aware of the failings of "low budget" attorneys, borrowed a huge amount of money and retained the "best" drug defense attorney in Vancouver. As a result, my sister was safely snoring in my home back in the states (on bail) two days later. Further, under the strength of arguments from "Mr. Vancouver," all charges were dropped on constitutional grounds.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't wish to tout the merit of my sister's penchant for the horticultural sciences. Further, let it stand on the record that I do not share her green thumb. What I do share is my mother's sense of injustice that one must either be independently wealthy, or be willing (or able) to go deeply in debt in order…