Customer Reviews

In America's Court: How a Civil Lawyer Who Likes to Settle Stumbled into a Criminal Trial

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Thomas Geoghegan has done a remarkable job showing both the triumphs and frustrations of a working case in the criminal justice system. The reader follows an appeal of a young man convicted in conspiracy during a robbery that had turned into murder. Geoghegan sits as the second chair (the support attorney) during the appeal. Geoghegan does a wonderful job of explaining that the convicts can actually be nice people and have remorse for their actions. The convicted shooter actually tries to help the young man during appeal by testifying for him, although he has nothing to gain. The reader learns that Geoghegan is surprised to find that the shooter is actually nice and well spoken. The reader follows through the appeal process and learns the law is very different depending what type the lawyer practices. Criminal is much different from civil in which Geoghegan practices.

This book is split into two sections. The first part is the appeal and the second part is Geoghegan's views of what is wrong with the justice system and the legal profession in general. He provides a very liberal view on the death penalty, abortion, and against Republican views. He makes no bones about where his leanings are and this is actually a fresh perspective. He shows that attorneys are human with normal views of right and wrong. He openly wonders about the shortcomings of the system and if anything can be done about this. This book is an absolute must read and is very highly recomended.

I read this book from the not-so-disinterested perspective of a lawyer who applied to law school late in life (well, 32) and who is about to start his professional life. I was blown away. I strongly urge anyone considering law school to pick up this book. It's an effortless read because of Geoghegan's style -- it feels like you're listening to an audio tape -- and it's worth the money.

The book is divided into two parts: The first (which seems to be the one that most readers and reviewers have focused on) recalls Geoghegan's experience assisting in a criminal case. The second is far more interesting: Geoghegan's thoughts on his life as a lawyer, on new sources of law, on the work lawyers do, on the problems facing the profession and on the potential of law as an agent of change. Because he readily admits his failings and his naivete in the first part, I trusted Geoghegan when he expounded on subjects in which he is well-versed -- in the second part. I won't distill the section's essence, but I will say that Geoghegan's invocation of a particular area of law as holding promise for social change definitely got me thinking about the direction my legal career would take. He also provides helpful warnings about life as a corporate lawyer. So, this is one of those life-changing books for me.

Years ago, I read "Which Side Are You On?" At the time I was a reporter, and I felt more than a little smug about my ability to "make a difference." (That book, also highly recommended, is about Geoghegan's struggles as a labor lawyer.) I eventually enrolled in law school. Geoghegan's book is a great (and, for me, timely) reality-check of the expectations I can hope to fulfil in the law profession.

Everyone who believes that criminal defendants have a presumption of innocence when standing trial should read this book.

Geoghegan is a talented writer who pulls the reader in with telling details. Geoghegan begins this brisk exploration of the criminal justice system telling us that as a civil attorney who handles complex litigation nearly all suits slowly move towards settlement instead of trial. After 20 years of mostly settling cases he sits as second chair to an experienced criminal defense attorney in a retrial. The first problem he encounters is locating the state criminal courts building in his hometown of Chicago because he's never been there. The fast pace of the book matches the fast action of the criminal justice system once court is in session. It features well drawn portraits of all the players.

You should also ckeck out his first book about being a labor lawyer for small unions, "Which Side Are You On? Trying to Be for Labor When It's Flat on Its Back." Though written 10 years ago, it's still in print; and still pertinent.

As a criminal defense attorney for 20 plus years, I found this to be a brilliant look into the workings of a big-city criminal court, the attorneys and the differences between civil and criminal practitioners. It's a marvelous true story told with humor and erudition.

I picked up "In America's Court" because, like most civil lawyers, I'm fascinated by criminal law and criminal trials. I was hoping this book would convey what it's really like to try a criminal case.

And the book does do that, to an extent. The trial described in the book was a three-day retrial of a 22-year-old man who had been convicted of felony murder seven years earlier and had won the right to a new trial on appeal. Geoghegan tells us about the interviews with the defendant and a few witnesses, jury selection, opening statements, direct and cross examination, and so on.

The problem is the signal-to-noise ratio. First, as others have pointed out, Geoghegan flaunts his politics on every page, almost in every sentence. Most of this takes the form of preaching-to-the-converted asides and digressions that hardly ever rise to the level of logical argument. Indeed, the last 50 pages, almost a quarter of the whole book, have nothing to do with the trial and instead consist of a meandering meditation on what's wrong with the law, how to effect change, etc.

Second, Geoghegan's style is about as far from straightforward as one can get. In the beginning, I found his self-conscious, jittery voice entertaining. But after 25 pages, I just wanted him to get to the point already. Long before the book was over, Geoghegan had made himself (or his authorial persona) intensely dislikable.

This is a short, honest, informally written, unpretentious and mostly amusing account by and about a once common but now fast disappearing type of socially conscious attorney in our big American cities. A late sixties graduate of an elite law school, Geoghegan sought to change the world through the court system, to do well by doing good. Now, some forty years later, he tells us that he settles almost all his civil cases and he details the many ways in which he can't begin to try a criminal one. Geoghegan has also found it necessary to settle in many other, more important respects. He makes less than a first year associate at a large firm. He no longer looks to the courts to upset the status quo. Even as recently as Clinton, he expected intelligence on the federal bench. Now he finds less and less--and that was before Harriet Miers called George W the brightest man she ever met!
Although the dust jacket suggests otherwise, this is light reading about a number of serious topics. I think Geoghegan owes us more.

The concept -- civil attorney gets involved in criminal trial and experiences revelations -- drew me to this book. However, in the concept's execution, the author's constant (and gratuitous) asides about ideological matters are so distracting and take away so much focus from the story that reading the book becomes very frustrating. Early on, when sitting in on voir dire to pick a jury the author remarks that the only question worth asking prospective jurors is "What are your politics?" Clearly that is how the author frames Life. The story would have been much more effective (and credible) if he had just told the story. The story actually would have spoken very well for itself without the need for the preaching.

As entertaining as it is sophisticated and thoughtful, this book first delights by its author's unassuming account of himself and his contributions to the case at hand. The book works as both an insider's account of a trial, replete with offbeat descriptions of circumstances and characters that a lesser eye might not even notice, and as an indictment of our justice system, which all too often is a crap shoot with the dice loaded against the poor, the young, and the dispossessed. Fortunately, the author doesn't stop there, as most such books do--this isn't a screed but a prescription for progress that we would be well advised to heed a sometimes hilarious, sometimes sad, but always colorful story of how our courts work.

The author is a weak, whiny fellow who spends the duration of this slender volume wallowing in self-pity at his wasted life. There are no insights about criminal trials nor criminal justice; the author is too much of a milquetoast to even do anything during the trial other than watch.

I feel bad that the author is so unhappy in his profession; but then he graduated from Harvard Law in 1975, so it isn't like he had no choice in the matter.

Geoghegan preferes to whine and complain, and it is excruciating for the reader to bear. At the end, this wasted little book leaves the reader with nothing but scorn for a bellyacher of an attorney too scared to do anything real with his life.