The comments section is rife with complaints about Judges (one in particular) demanding that lawyers go to their courtroom first and judges giving a lawyer who shows up at 9:15 or 9:30 for a case set at 9 am a hard time.
We agree with the commentators who have expressed both dismay and outrage at the judge(s) who act that way. It is petty, tyrannical and wrong. This is not federal court where one case is set at 9 am. That is a horse of a different color.
Let us extrapolate.
It took us well more than two decades of taking most cases that walked through the door and being in the REGJB every day before we could build a reputation that allowed us to charge more and be more discriminating in the cases we accepted. During that time period Mondays brought us calendars with 15 or 20 different courtrooms to be at- albeit this was a time before BOT when there was a thriving DUI criminal defense business along with our felonies and the odd federal case.
The judges in the REGJB knew us and many of our compatriots who worked the same way. The judges understood that if were not in their courtroom when the case was called we would be there shortly. The best of them told our clients that they knew us and were sure we would be there shortly. The worst of them berated us in absentia.
If anything, the practice of criminal law has gotten more difficult. There are more lawyers competing for the same clients and the price of representation that a young lawyer can charge is going down. Which mean those young lawyers within the first ten years of their practice have to run a volume business as they seek to build their reputation. We've all be there (except maybe for DOM) and when we say "we" that includes many of judges who ran small practices before assuming the bench.
There should be a level of understanding that a good lawyer, who is always in court, might be stuck before a judge moving slow, or taking an early plea and that within reason, a lawyer who shows up at 9:10 or 9:20 for a 9 AM case that is not special set should not be berated by the judge.
We all know the lawyers who are in the REGJB every day, working hard, trying cases and defending their clients. This is about them and not the troublesome lawyer who has a reputation of always being late.
And speaking of that, there are a coterie of Judges who do not start on time. And they are part of the calculus that the everyday REGJB lawyer has to deal with. Sometimes lawyers are late because the y are waiting for the judge who set the case at 8:30 to start.
So this is for them- the good, hardworking, young and busy lawyers who may show up to a courtroom a few minutes late. Most likely they have been in the REGJB since 8 or 8:30, running around, doing their work as best they can. They deserve to be treated with dignity and respect and not be told by a Judge that they have to come to his/her courtroom first. Such an attitude exhibits a stunning ignorance of the difficulty of running a small legal criminal defense practice. It's the type of belittling selfishness that the Broward Judiciary circa 1980s'1990's was infamous for.