“It's a really tough job to be a defense lawyer. You have a very particular part to play. You have a role. And that role isn't what you think as a person is good and right and what you would do for your friend or your family member in that situation. What your role is, is to play this part of a system in which you're the one who stands up for the guy that everybody else hates. Even if everybody hates you, even if maybe you hate yourself a little bit, you have to do your job.”
Radiolab · Ideas & Essays · October 2026
Context
Two defence lawyers had learned from their client where two murdered girls' bodies were. Asked whether they should just have called the police, the legal ethics professor explains why a defence lawyer's role says no, even when it feels wrong.
Transcript
And even if the parents of the missing girls in question are frightened and waking up, and even if they have hired detectives and even if the local police are combing the woods and the taxpayers are paying for that, but there's no, if the people are already dead, then the law is shh.
That's right.
It's a really tough job to be a defense lawyer. You have a very particular part to play. You have a role. And that role isn't what you think as a person is good and right and what you would do for your friend or your family member in that situation. What your role is, is to play this part of a system in which you're the one who stands up for the guy that everybody else hates. Even if everybody hates you, even if maybe you hate yourself a little bit, you have to do your job. And that job is to be in the role of the person that fights as hard as they can for their client.
The lawyer is the agent of his client.
Only, only the agent of the client? Or also a citizen and a member of the part of the justice system. And there's a double murder here, and families seeking to find out what happened. He now knows what happens.
Right.
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