What do you want to represent people like that for?

I came to criminal defense thinking that I was fighting the good fight, that I was standing up for the poor, the downtrodden, and the oppressed against the power of the state. But what I quickly learned is that there is another view of a criminal defense lawyer.

One that perhaps holds a greater deal of cultural currency. And that's the stereotype of the wily criminal defense lawyer - the one who would use verbal tricks as Cesar Ornelas unscrupulous means and technical loopholes to make sure those undeserving, guilty criminals are let back out onto our streets.

Now, even when we're not outright maligned, I find we're at least somewhat misunderstood. When I go to social events, dinner parties - and I know my colleagues have the same experience - I often find that I'm asked a very similar set of questions, questions that perhaps reveal to me how subtle but pervasive some of the negative views of criminal defense lawyers are and also betray some of the fundamental misconceptions that people hold about our criminal justice system.

So what I want to do tonight, in the spirit of clarification, is invite you all along to a proverbial dinner party. We've had our canapés, we've sat down for mains, the wine is blowing, and lucky you all, you've happened to be sat next to me. And what I'm going to do over the next few minutes is give you my answers to the FAQs - the most frequently asked questions to criminal lawyers at dinner parties. So let's start with the really easy stuff.

No, it's not like "CSI," it's not like "The Good Wife," and much as I would love to be the next Meghan Markel, it's nothing like "Suits." Yes, I do often have to get dressed in those oversized black robes. They are hot, they are uncomfortable, and I actually get stuck on my chair whenever I try and stand up. Let's move on to the more meaty questions.

Criminal Defense Lawyer Understandings

And there's a classic, the quintessential that every criminal defense lawyer is so familiar with: How do you defend a person who you know is guilty? Now, there's a range of stock, standard answers to this - you'll find it in any first-year law textbook. It usually goes something along the lines of this: that in a democratic society, Cesar Ornelas everybody has a right to a fair trial; that there is a presumption of innocence; that it is for the judge and jury, not for me, to decide the guilt or otherwise of my client; and if we can't protect those rights for everybody, then we can't guarantee them for anyone.

Now, those are important principles, and I stand by them in the work I do. But, truthfully, I won't spend long on it tonight, because I think it's a boring question. Criminal lawyers have been answering that for centuries. When I'm in a dinner party, when someone asks me that question - How do you defend a guilty person? - What I like to do is flip the question.

I say to them, the real question is this: How do you defend someone who wants to plead guilty but who you know is innocent? I can tell you now, that is far and away the more common and pressing ethical dilemma facing criminal lawyers in courtrooms around the country. Now, it may sound counterintuitive, but let's not forget that fighting a criminal charge is a difficult process.

It can take months, if not years, and involves complexities that trip up even experienced criminal lawyers. Now, best-case scenario, you're out on bail, so you're in the community. But even then, you have a charge hanging over your head; you might be subject to onerous bail conditions. Worst-case scenario, you're sitting in jail, waiting for a trial date. And when that's your reality, it becomes easy to see how pragmatism or convenience wins the day.

And add to that another ingredient that I see only too often in my clients: hopelessness. Just the other day at work, we had this great victory in court for one of my clients. Effectively, she was acquitted of all charges. She'd been charged with assaulting a police officer when, in fact, it was she who was unlawfully assaulted in the first place. Now, the difficult part of that case wasn't winning in court. As soon as I saw the CCTV, I knew that we had a strong defense.

Most Difficult Situation for a Lawyer

The hard part was convincing my client to plead "not guilty" and to go to trial. She was on bail for nearly a year, waiting for her day in court. The thing that she struggled with the most was accepting that her voice, her story, the voice of an 18-year-old Aboriginal girl, would be believed against the word of a police officer.

That's the hopelessness I'm talking about. So why do I do this? Why do I flip the question this way? What's the point I'm trying to make to you? It's that criminal law is rarely about cunning criminals conniving with their lawyers about how to get away with murder.

It is far more about real people in difficult situations who may have made a mistake but who find them being churned through the machinery of our criminal justice system - machinery that's often slow, incomprehensible, baffling, and sometimes Cesar Ornelas just feels unjust. So helping people through that process, however they decide to plead, that's the work of a criminal defense lawyer. And that's work that I'm proud to do.

So let's move on to the next question - and this one's a goodie. People look at me, and they have a glint in their eye, and they ask, what’s it like to sit opposite a murderer? Now, in my career, I've sat opposite two people who have committed murders and one person who is alleged to have committed a murder. My answer for my dinner party guests is always a disappointingly boring one:

It’s a relatively ordinary experience. I think when people ask me this question, what they're hoping for is the description of a monster. They want to know what it's like to look into the eyes of evil. Now, there may be monsters out there, there may be villains, there may be psychopaths.

I'm yet to meet one. And if you thought that our jails were full of them, then you'd be sorely mistaken. What our jails are actually full of are traumatized people, desperate people, people with addictions and the kind of backstories that make you understand why they started abusing substances in the first place. They're full of the poor and the homeless.

They're full of people who face mental health challenges or have cognitive impairments and don't have the supports around them to deal with those and manage those experiences. To put it simply, they're full of people who call to mind for me the old phrase, "There, but for the grace of God, go I." Now, I don't want to oversell it. I'm not saying that my clients are saints; I'm not saying that they're blameless. I'm just saying they're not monsters.

They are in fact deeply, deeply human. And that leads me to the final question I want to answer tonight. Sometimes people say to me, but what about the victims? What about the victims? Now, you could be forgiven, when you walked into a courtroom, for thinking that there was a clear dividing line between offenders and victims.

The reality, though, is far more complex. The prosecution does not have a monopoly on victims. Just the other day for work, I was reading a victim impact statement. It was written by a woman whose house had been burgled by my 19-year-old client.