Lawyers Should Be Paid In Criminal Cases

Simply put, lawyers are the lifeblood of an entire branch of the United States’ system of government: the legislative branch. Without lawyers, the entire justice system would go under. They are defendants for both the innocent and guilty, the weak and the powerful, the oppressed and the oppressors, and the individual and the government. In the simplest answer possible, lawyers are any person that speak for or instruct one side in any given case, but they do so much more. Everyone is familiar with the lawyers people see on TV, but they never see all the work that goes into making the end result possible. In criminal cases, they are constantly speaking and coordinating with witnesses and experts to build their case. They spend hours writing up …show more content…
For many public defender lawyers or non-profit lawyers, they can work in cramped and crowded environments with a lack of funding. This lack of funding has also lead to much lower salaries for these public lawyers. The lowest salaries can start at $60,000 for lower income areas and not go much higher than that. In non-profit work, depending on the funding of the particular non-profit, lawyers could on average make $80,000. For private practice, conditions are much better. If one works for a large corporation, they can easily make six figures with luxurious offices. The only condition is that the company expects much more from him and demand …show more content…
For me, I want to be a non-profit lawyer because I want to make a difference on the political landscape by fighting to defend the constitution and defending the civil liberties of my fellow Americans. This also leads into the worst aspect of being a lawyer. No matter what you do, there will always be people that disagree with you and hate you. Defense lawyers in criminal cases will be viewed as trying to release dangerous criminals. Prosecutors will be viewed as stopping at nothing to put away some innocent people. In civil law, there will always be people that think you are ruining this great country and perverting the constitution.
This very reason is why lawyers have such a bad reputation. Every time that I ever mentioned to my friends that I wanted to be a lawyer, there was always a little bit of recoil. To them, and many others, lawyers represented snakes that preyed upon the weak. They will use any means necessary to get what they want or what the people they work for want, even if they represent something completely immoral. This view is mostly held in reference to business lawyers, but it can be held about anybody in any