483: Life as a Private Criminal Defense Attorney (w/Hannah Seigel Proff)

We're the co-creators of the Law School Toolbox, the Bar Exam Toolbox, and the career-related website CareerDicta. Alison also runs The Girl's Guide to Law School. If you enjoy the show, please leave a review or rating on your favorite listening app. And if you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out to us. You can reach us via the contact form on LawSchoolToolbox.com, and we'd love to hear from you. And with that, let's get started. Hi, this is Lee from the Law School Toolbox.

I am so excited to have one of my dear friends from law school here, Hannah Siegel Proff, who is a private solo criminal defense lawyer out in Denver, and she is going to chat with us about life as a criminal defense lawyer. And Hannah, I have done 500 or plus episodes, and you're like the first law school friend who's been on it, which is really funny to me. Wow. I know. had no idea. Hannah Seigel Proff: You've got to change that. I'm honored to be the first, but you have to change that.

I basically need to go down my list and be like, "Who else wants to come join?"

So, a 22-year-old Hannah, what that meant to me at that moment was doing prisoners' rights, civil rights, that sort of work. But as soon as I was introduced to trial practice, that all changed. I fell in love with being in a courtroom, and cross-examinations, and the strategy and the theater of it all, and I was hooked. And so, I parlayed my passion for fighting the prison industrial complex into direct representation and indigent defense, specifically.

My parents, my father worked for the government, so I was sort of raised on this idea like you get a government job and you stay there for 25 years, and then you retire. So, I went into the public defenders, again, at the ripe old age of 24-25, with that plan. So, when I switched courses eventually and left PD life, thanks to the support of mentors and things like that, I was surprised as I ventured down that path how much business and business development, how much time it takes.

Lucky for me, I love that part of it. My husband and I own a brewery, I have a real estate business that I run. I love business, so it isn't a bummer to me that I spend probably 25% of my week doing business development, doing those sorts of things. But I think that's been the most surprising thing about running my own law firm.

And also, don't just do the, "If I billed X number per hour, eight hours a day, I would make X", because if I'm billing eight hours a day, I'm working 12. And you know that from private law practice as well. So, it takes a lot of time to bill time, and then add on top of that all the business stuff you get to do as a business owner.

And it was a little bit different, because he'd had so many years with the government, I think the government still supported some of the benefits and things like that. But still, there're a lot of logistics. And one of the things that he always commented was that it's a different way of being on call when you have these individual clients. You don't just get to go home at 6:00.

Which he didn't always do if he was in trial, but generally speaking, you didn't have somebody calling you with an emergency. And so, he used to keep a suit in the back of his car because he just never knew when he would be somewhere and would get a phone call and need to go to the jail or need to go have a meeting with someone, because it was just a much different dynamic.

The people who call my office to hire me, you don't call a criminal defense attorney because you need help three months from now, right? So, I have to set it up that that business goes elsewhere. And again, I try to not use a scarcity mindset with my firm. And understand that when I make time for myself, when I take the cases I want and say "no" to cases that don't suit me, the work I want to do is going to come back for me.

Or if I say "no" to five cases while I'm in Mexico for 20 days, when I get back I'm going to be refreshed to do better work for the clients that I can take. So, I think it's hard when you run your own firm, because it feels like every call is money that you could make, but not running a firm from a scarcity mindset is something I really have worked hard at.

So, one of the things you mentioned when you were talking about your practice is you do juvenile defense. And so, what are the unique challenges juvenile defendants face? And I feel like you don't necessarily hear a lot of law firms that focus on that, or promote that they work with juveniles. Hannah Seigel Proff: Yeah, it's so interesting.

One of my mentors when I was starting my firm, I went to her with my logo and my website before it was all launched, and she gave me the advice to back off on the juvenile stuff. She's like, "Look, I think it makes you seem like you're less of a litigator." There has been unfortunately this sort of stereotype that people who practice juvenile law are less kind of fierce litigators, because it's more of a soft system. I don't agree with any of that.

But her advice - and I trust her and she's still a dear friend and a mentor - was sort of, "Back up off the juvenile stuff. That work will come to you because of your reputation doing that work." And I really stuck with my guns.

And the reason I stuck with launching a law firm that says it's a juvenile-focused law firm is, it's the work that I love to do, it's the clients that I love to assist, and really, it's a practice area and a specialty that's really come to fruition, at least in Colorado, in the 16 years I've been practicing. When I started as a public defender, there were very few lawyers who were focused on representing children in a holistic manner, specifically children charged as adults.

Those cases were just assigned to public defenders who represented adults, because the child was in adult court. And it's really in those years that I was a public defender that the norm started to shift. And we started to say, "We really need specialists to do this work, who really understand the adolescent brain and development and the law specifically with children." So, it's been a joy of mine that that's a focus of mine.

And I still get plenty of criminal defense work in the door, but I get a lot of juvenile defense work. I'm everywhere from Aspen to Colorado Springs, which is hundreds of miles away for those people who aren't Colorado people, doing juvenile defense, which is what I love to do. So I think when I took maybe the risk of putting out that specialty and really putting out into the world what I want to do, that work came to me and people think of me for that work. So, I really love it.

I would assume too that the challenge of juvenile work is that oftentimes you are really holding a community or a family around that juvenile who has made possibly poor choices in extreme situations. When my father changed careers, and people would say lots of things about prosecutors who switch, because I think a lot of prosecutors are true believers. And my dad always would say things like, "I have a role to play. In my role, people make mistakes on my side. People make mistakes.

We all do our best to keep the system as honest as we can." So when you switch sides, people would say all sorts of stuff, right? "How can you do this? How can you defend?" And he's like, "You know, most of my clients are people who made poor choices in extreme situations." And you're often holding the families who are supporting a person who made poor choices in extreme situations.

And so, I would assume in the juvenile court process it's the same, because you've got to have parents and family and community that are also really hurting and scared. And that's something they don't train you to do in law school, is manage families.

That is one of the hardest things about juvenile defense, and it's why for a lot of people, it's not the right fit, because you have a client, you owe your duty of loyalty to that client, you have your attorney/client privilege with that client, but then you have parents, often, who are paying you, or even if they're not paying you, they want to be apprised. Of course, the child is the holder of the privilege, so they can say, "Tell my mom nothing", "Tell my mom everything."

Both of those conversations are hard for the lawyer, right? So, managing the family is very hard. I'll also say I represent a lot of lawyers' children. I personally don't have children, but people who have children, it is like their brain does not work. People call me, "Well, I'm a lawyer. I sort of understand my kid's in big trouble." And I think to myself, "You actually probably know less than the average Joe who calls me and their kid's in trouble, because you know too much."

So, that part is hard, but I love that part and I love looking at the whole. I practice holistic juvenile defense, and that's sort of best practices in Colorado these days. And so, looking at really the whole child, the whole family, if it's available to me, to address the needs. Of course, I represent innocent children. There may be no needs, they're just wrongfully accused.

But a lot of times I represent a child who in a split second, because their prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed, made a terrible decision, to your point. And the entire rest of their life could be changed in such detrimental ways. I'm representing children charged with homicide, sex assault, weapons charges. They're in really big trouble. And that's the hardest part about the work. It never gets easy to watch anyone go to prison. The heartbreak of watching a child go to prison...

And sometimes prison is the best option. If you can get a child a 20-year sentence to prison on a murder case, unfortunately that might be considered a good sentence in some cases. And that's still longer than that child's lived, longer than the parents have had with the child in the home. None of those conversations are easy, but I really love it. I love it. And I just try to keep empathy at the front of all of the conversations.

And I feel like that must be something that you really have had to hone when you're dealing with all of these folks who are in a crisis moment, as you said.

And I have never had to stay that long, but I don't come in and say, "I'm going to be out of here by 3:00", because that starts off the conversation with "I don't have enough time for whatever you want to tell me." I'm like, "This is our first conversation, so I'm here as long as you need me." Most of the time a meeting lasts for an hour. Everyone's exhausted after an hour. I'm going to get out of there. But I'm holding space to have that conversation go as long as I need.

Moving forward, once I've built trust, I can say to someone, "Look, I have a doctor's appointment at 3:00, so I've only got an hour today. I hope that's okay." They know I'm going to listen, and I have listened in the past, and so that's something that really works well for me. Same with my office meetings. I will assume there will be an hour that first one, but if there are two, I have the time on my calendar.

Even my 10-year-old, sometimes it takes me a while to say, "Alright, we're just going to kind of noodle on this until you start giving me actual information about what I need."

If I'm talking to young people about the first time they had sex, or really scary situations, they may not want to make eye contact with a 42- year-old woman, or with anyone for that matter, while they talk about it. So, I really try to think outside the box about how to build rapport and how to have those tough conversations, because you have to have that relationship in order to do my job well.

I mean, maybe law schools are talking to them about this more than when we were in law school, but still, law school is not as focused on being the whole person as maybe they should be. So, where do those skills come from? I mean, you have always been a good listener. We've known each other for a long time, I think that's part of who you are. But these are skills that can be developed.

For the most part, people hire me because of my empathetic listening, because of my vibe, the thing I say when they walk in or when we're texting before the meeting or something. People don't come in for the most part and start quizzing me about the law. I'm very good at the law, I know the law. People don't hire me having seen me ever cross-examine someone, right? They can read the reviews online, all of those things.

They hire you because of your personality, and your life experiences, and your ability to make eye contact and to have those conversations. I also say that as I'm neurodiverse, I'm dyslexic, so I'm thinking about this from a neurodiversity perspective. I know some of us aren't as good at making eye contact or things, but think about the ways that you can connect to people, like what's best for you and is authentic to your personality.

There is nothing about being a trial attorney that works if it's not your style. I've learned this the hard way by seeing people in the courtroom and trying to emulate something and then being like, "I feel like an absolute idiot right now. This is not me, this isn't something Hannah does." So, it feels like I'm putting on an act, and I think a jury can tell that as well.

And that's how it is with clients, whether it's a divorce or a civil rights case, someone's family member, a personal injury case, people are injured, they've lost a family member, they've lost their ability to use their body, feel well. You have to have so much empathy for that. And honestly, I think thinking more broadly than yourself generally is going to help unlock that.

I also think getting into those situations and watching other lawyers address it when you have internships, asking - it might not be billable or whatever - but "Can I come to those meetings where you decide whether you take a client?", because a lot of the empathy starts, a lot of that rapport building starts in those initial meetings: "I am so, so sorry this happened to you." One of the things I always say, which is 100% true, when people call my office, I will say, "How are you?

Thanks for your call. How are you?" And then I immediately say, "Although I know most people don't call my office on a great day, I'm glad to be talking to you." Because it's true, people don't call a criminal defense attorney because it's like, "Yay, a summons just pulled up in the mail" or, "There's a cop outside my door." Very rarely.

So yeah, I think think globally, read books, keep your personality outside being a lawyer, because I swear, I don't get any of my business because of my lawyer skills, upfront at least, from a business perspective. And

She has this amazing presence and you can see why she sits with people often in their darkest moments. She works with parents who their children are in a pediatric care and are in crisis. But you can see that she just has this ability to show up and hold space in a way that I've never seen before. And having her in my life has made me a better business owner. I mean, I talk to people who are in a different type of crisis, right?

Not so extreme, but they might feel like they can't move forward in their profession, they are struggling. And I am able to hold those conversations better, because I've had a friend in a totally different realm who's modeled for me what it feels like when somebody is really present. She just has this deep presence. And so, I think so often we forget to look outside the legal profession - like you were saying, read books and do that.

But what does it feel like to be around somebody who's such a good, compassionate listener? And then you'd want to take that and say, "How do I do that, even in my personal life when my friends are in crisis? How do I show up in that way?"

Then I have the litigation, I have, like you, the empathetic, the lawyer that when I talk to her about a case or whatever, tears come to her eyes, like she feels me with me. It's such an important lesson, but I'm maybe not going to come to that person for the business development help, because she's the one who's like, "I work for a law firm because I'm a mess and I can't have my own business." So, I think you can't lean on one kind of example or mentor for everything.

So, you might have someone at your first job - for the listeners - that you're like, "Wow, they run a client meeting so well." But then you see them litigating and you're like, "That would never be me in the courtroom. It's way too flashy. It's way too whatever." That's fine. That person can be your client visit mentor in your head, and then you can borrow from someone who fits more your style for the courtroom presentation part of things. So, I love that.

And that friend of yours sounds amazing.

It makes those get-togethers really powerful, especially when nobody has a lot of free time. And so, time becomes such a precious commodity.

And during that presentation, one of the things that the students were like, "Oh, this was so helpful to hear" was, I said, as people's mentor, and as a member of the legal community that people come to for advice, I am so appreciative when a mentee of mine comes to me and says, "I want to talk.

I would love to schedule a 15-minute phone call to talk about negotiating this contract that I just got this job offer", or "15 minutes to talk about my theme and theory in this DUI trial I have next week." I'm so much more excited to take that meeting than like a nebulous, "Can we schedule a call?" Because when I go to plug "Can we schedule a call?" into my Eisenhower decision-making matrix of like, "How urgent is this?", I have no idea. Is it life or death, or this can wait a month?

And I just did it yesterday. I'm thinking of doing something sort of unorthodox in a case that I start in eight days. And I texted two mentors, "Have you ever done X? Even, yes or no, I would still like to schedule a call after the Thanksgiving holiday to talk to you about this trial of mine that starts on the 9th. Do you have any time between the 2nd and the 9th?" They wrote back right away, thrilled to schedule the call because I was specific with my needs.

So yeah, having those people you go to and being explicit with, "Right now I want to talk about this really hard case" or, "I want to talk about my stress about retirement savings", or whatever it is - I'm so happy to have that agenda. And of course we're going to stray and talk about other things, but we're going to start with whatever the most pressing topic is for you, and that's how it should be.

Like you said, you can stray and have other conversations, but it feels good as the person who's giving that support to say, "You have this need and I can help you meet this need right now." It makes you feel good and helpful, and then it also gets the receiver of the advice what they need. They don't have to feel awkward. And you can even pre-think about it. I think that's great too. If you are prepping for a case and want specific advice, maybe you don't want the off-the-cuff advice.

Maybe you want the advice that they thought about on their commute into work, knowing they're going to have a meeting with you later. You couldn't do that if you didn't prep them for

So, how have you set up your life so you feel that you have what you want professionally and what you want outside of your life?

I always tell this anecdote, because I think it's so telling - one of the reasons I decided to leave the public defender is my husband, Brandon, said to me - my six, six and a half years as a public defender - he says, "Do you know you haven't texted me about something that wasn't work-related in six months?" And I was like, "Oh my gosh, please." In my head, I'm of course getting defensive, because this sounds so bad.

And so then I get on the bus - and I'll never forget - I get in the bus and I'm scrolling and he's like, "I love you." And I'm like, "Did you pick up my dry cleaning, because I start trial on Monday?" He's like, "Any plans this weekend?" I'm like, "Closing murder on Monday", because my last six months as a public defender, I tried two murder trials and four sex assault trials. I was just litigating all of the time.

So, that was a real wakeup call for me and I'm so glad he said something, because at the end of this career, I plan to retire right at 60, so I will have been a lawyer for 35 years at that point. I'm going to have, hopefully, God willing, years and years of life ahead of me, and I want to have a partner, and a life, and friends, and not just have my whole life around my law firm and my cases.

Of course my legal community, I love my legal community, but Lee, we went to school in California, so I moved here to Colorado to be a lawyer. So, a lot of my friends when I first started were public defenders, were lawyers. It's been really important to me to diversify my friend groups, diversify what I'm spending time doing, and making my family a priority. I'm also religious about the gym. I have to get to the gym five days a week.

I just have seen firsthand how much better my brain works and lowers my stress. I try to keep what I call a Secular Sabbath, which is based in the Jewish traditions that I grew up with, but really more just, I don't work from sundown on Friday to Sunday morning, even when I'm really prepping a trial, because you're never at your best when you've worked seven days a week. So, it reminds me of taking the bar.

Everybody said with the bar exam, "Take those couple of days before the bar off, don't study." And I remember that seemed so hard. And then when I was almost done with the bar, it's like, "Wow, if I had been going nonstop, I would have burnt out." There's only so much gas in the tank. It's

And that's for anyone who gets a speeding ticket - which, who hasn't been there?, to of course folks who are investigated or a part of larger allegations of criminal wrongdoing, to know what does a lawyer say you should do in those situations, which is, remain silent, don't consent to them searching you or your stuff, and really putting yourself at the center of that and making sure you understand how your rights apply.

And also talking about safety and acknowledging generally the white supremacy in the history of policing in this country, and that there are just going to be certain folks, certain young folks that we're teaching it's not safe for them to have police interactions. And so, understanding how to safely exercise their rights is an imperative. So, I love the work that we do. I will tell you though, I got burnt out of having an unpaid extra job.

And it started to feel like it wasn't going to be able to be sustained, and the message is so important that we decided it would go under the Transformative Justice Project, which is an amazing non-profit in town. And I cannot wait to just go in and teach the curriculum instead of doing all of the back-end things that I'm not as good at, like fundraising and all of those things. Although I'm sure I will still help with all of those things.

Just remember, you do not know what's in anyone's backpack. You do not know what's in the trunk of the car. If the police officer comes to your front door, this is what you say and do." And my dad was a prosecutor at that time, and he's still like, "These are the things that you can do." And so, even now, as my friends have teens, one of my friends, their teen was staying home alone for the first weekend by himself.

And I sat him down and was like, "I f you need to call the police for something, here's what's going to happen. Or if you get pulled over", whatever. And I think it's so important, because who else is having these conversations with young people? Young people of color, of course, there's such a greater impact on some of them because of the history of racism around some of these interactions. The stakes are so high for everyone, but even more so for those populations.

I think that being able to bring this discussion and empower with information is so important. I really respect the fact that you've brought it into... And so, are you doing it in schools? Are you teaching it in schools? We

So, it's really rewarding and important work, but I'm excited to go on to the next kind of volunteer thing, because at this point, LYRIC has been about a 10-hour a week job for me on top of my job for probably 10 years. For the first five years we were pretty grassroots, it wasn't very organized. But now we have a staff and it's a lot.

So I just wish I would have relaxed to feel myself and build community more with my mentors. I had a few. Richard Sakai, who was at our law school, who's one of my dear friends and mentors, and I credit with a lot of my success in law school. There were those people that I was able to put my guard down and be myself around, and I think I was good at that around my colleagues and our cohort.

But when I went to a networking event, I was like 22-year-old Hannah pretending to be 42-year-old Hannah, even though she had it totally wrong. So, I think just relax, be yourself, ask those questions. I think the thing I got right about law school is I knew what I wanted to do. I don't really understand contracts, and I'm going to study as hard as I can, I'm not going to break myself over it. And I got a C in Contracts. And has there ever been a negative consequence in my life?

Other than the fact that when I sign contracts, I always think to myself, "Ooh, maybe I shouldn't have gotten a C in Contracts." I don't do that work. So, that focus worked out well for me because I love what I do. But I wish I would have just been myself and admitted the things I didn't know, because I didn't know. I knew next to nothing.

And I think the good news is, after about five years as a public defender, I matured a little and I also kind of put my head up out from under the water and I was like, "Okay, I can do this." I no longer have the imposter syndrome that I started out with, but now I need to figure out how to do it better and learn from the people around me. So, that's how I'd coach myself. But otherwise, I will say I did a lot of things right. We had fun.

We didn't just study all the time, which I'm very thankful for. I meet some of these law students now that I'm working with and I'm like, "What are you doing this weekend?" They're like, "Studying." And it's like the first weekend of law school. You need to go meet your friends, meet your cohorts, go to that barbecue. These are going to be your colleagues and your friends for life. And don't throw that away.

Life was happening during that time, right? These are three years of your life, if you're in it full-time. And what do you want that to be? Yes, success. We both worked hard, we reached our goals, but it's still life. Life's happening right now, and you want to not miss out on it fully. You can be responsible and not miss out on it. A hundred percent. Yeah. Well, I like to end with one more question, because I think it's one that we don't ask a lot of lawyers.

It's like, are you happy with this path? Are you happy with your profession and what you do?

And I've really stuck to that, and it makes me really happy because I get to spend a lot of time doing the things I love, which is networking, business development, process development, and practicing law, meeting with clients, writing motions, preparing for trial. And I love that. And I have just a wonderful personal life, and Denver suits me, and I've really carved out a practice and a life that brings me a lot of joy. And I love being a lawyer.

I tell my students, every time I teach, I say to them, "You're taking a class from someone who loves being a lawyer." Not everyone loves being a lawyer, but I really do.

And I think it does us all good to remember that there is enough money. And I say this knowing a lot of folks need to pay off loans and that life is expensive, but I think as a profession people get golden handcuffs. And I will say that we have colleagues from law school that got golden handcuffs, and it's hard to get the key and take that key back and take control of your life. If you say, "Oh, I'm going to do this for five years and then I'm going to do..."

It's not easy to go and get a district attorney job after five years in BigLaw. I see people try to do it all the time, because there's a whole bunch of people who have done their whole career doing that. So, just think about, what is enough for you? And I think a happy life is definitely something that's attainable for attorneys, and for litigators, which I think can be even more elusive.

Thanks for listening, and we'll talk soon!