5 Day-to-Day Challenges Criminal Lawyers Face in Their Careers

To become a lawyer, you have faced an arduous journey of years of education, then the state bar examination, which is notoriously hard for even those who did well in law school. Once you have earned the right to put the J.D. (Juris Doctor) behind your name, the real challenges of practicing law begin.

Attorneys are specializing more frequently in the current legal climate. If you have chosen to practice criminal law, you may have earned your undergraduate degree in a field similar to Criminal Justice. After passing the bar, you have choices to decide which side of criminal law you want to practice. You could seek a position as a prosecutor, trying cases against those charged with illegal activity.

Working as a prosecutor gives you valuable experience and can help you garner political support if you see yourself seeking public office in the future. The downside is that most prosecutors are salaried employees with low starting pay. However, it is a steady paycheck with benefits, and in some cases, regular work hours. If you are just getting started in criminal law, the benefits of experience, steady pay, and regular hours might make it an appealing option.

Most attorneys who specialize in criminal law will end up on the other side, working as defense attorneys for those charged with crimes. The majority of criminal lawyers work in a solo practice, or as part of a small firm or partnership. This can pose a significant challenge for newly minted attorneys, as establishing yourself as a criminal attorney can take time, and that means the income you generate may be sporadic.

To help establish your name, you may work as a public defender, making salary smaller than most of your peers in other areas of law. Most public defenders make between $30,000 to $50,000 annually. There are also non-profit organizations that employ criminal defense attorneys, but as a non-profit, they usually pay only a modest salary.

So, if you planned to practice criminal law for the money, it may be a long journey to reach a place where you work on high-profile cases for wealthy clients. Those who are most successful in the field of criminal law are practicing because of a passion for seeing the criminal justice system work as intended. 

We have established that criminal law is not the type of law you practice to become rich quickly, but what other challenges face those in this particular field of legal practice?

Overburdened resources

Mounting a defense in a criminal case requires a significant investment of time and resources. A disproportionate number of criminal cases involve clients who are unable to pay upfront and a large retainer to cover the costs associated with their defense. If a criminal lawyer accepts a client, they are morally and ethically bound to provide the best defense possible, often for a small retainer and a monthly payment plan.

Many criminal defense attorneys cannot afford to pay full-time paraprofessional staff to do the research and complete each case's mundane tasks. Instead, the attorney has to juggle a large caseload with minimal assistance.

For a variety of different reasons, criminal clients can be demanding. Those charged with crimes are scared, stressed, and often have little knowledge of how the criminal justice system works. The lack of knowledge, combined with fear, means they will have a lot of questions. The alleged crime they are charged with is the most consuming thing in their lives, and it is hard for them to understand that their attorney has other obligations besides their case.

If it is a serious crime, and the accused is incarcerated or facing possible prison time, their stress levels are even higher. Many factors make a large portion of clients in criminal cases challenging to deal with, and when the stakes are high, this causes a high level of frustration for attorneys. Clients may not follow the advice given to them by the very person hired to provide them with the best defense possible, making it impossible to offer the best chance of a good outcome.

Running a business and a practice simultaneously

Ideally, a criminal lawyer would be able to devote their time to negotiate the best possible outcome for their clients. Unfortunately, those in small or single practice offices often have to wear many hats.  Running a small business is time-consuming and requires a significant amount of time consumed by managerial duties, accounting practices, advertising, and networking.

Criminal law attorneys often have to dedicate a large portion of their time to the above tasks, while operating a successful practice of providing legal services to clients. Being both a lawyer and a business owner can leave attorneys feeling overburdened and exhausted, especially before they can cultivate a team to relieve them of some of the work.

Finding a balance between their work and personal lives

When someone's future depends on how well you do your job, it can be challenging to leave work at the office. Irregular work hours are the norm, and it can be hard to carve out enough time to attend to your personal life.

Clients will demand much more of your time than they do in most other areas of practice. Criminal cases involve more hands-on work than many areas of law, as you will spend time investigating, combing through evidence and discovery, and negotiating with prosecutors. There is a human toll behind each case, and it can make it hard to focus on your personal life when the work you do can forever impact your client's life. 

The emotional toll of practicing criminal law

The practice of law can take a toll on attorneys' mental health, and the risk is inordinately high for those who practice criminal law. Burn out is a genuine phenomenon, and is described as a state of emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion that is unrelenting. Those in the criminal justice field are familiar with burnout and have seen many colleagues leave the field because of the extreme toll burnout can take on a person's overall wellbeing.

As a criminal defense attorney, you will see and hear about horrible crimes and often feel overwhelming sympathy for the victim. The job of a defense attorney demands that you put those feeling aside and offer a comprehensive defense for the person accused of the crime. Criminal law practitioners find themselves immersed in a world of substance abuse, violence, sex crimes, and cases where people have lost their lives. With stakes so high, it is often difficult to treat it like a legal case with no emotional involvement.

Criminal defense attorneys have an alarmingly high rate of PTSD, depression, and anxiety. Those who excel in the criminal defense field have to learn to separate their personal feelings from the cases they represent. They find a balance where they honor their commitment to the law, and they know that the criminal justice system only works when the defendants have the best defense possible.

The emotional toll may be the most taxing of all the challenges faced by criminal defense attorneys. However, those who learn to separate their personal feelings about the crimes from the defense to which each accused person is entitled to find great satisfaction in the role they play in keeping the wheels of justice turning.