Advice for Lawyer Jailbirds from Those Who Have Been There, Done That
When William Lerach, Richard “Dickie” Scruggs and Melvyn Weiss check in to prison, they should leave their golf clubs at home.
“The stories of long ago, where there are tennis courts and swimming pools, just aren’t true,” says Webster Hubbell, a former Justice Department lawyer who served 16 months at a federal prison camp in Maryland. Hubbell, who was convicted of defrauding his law firm and its clients of more than $450,000, was one of several lawyers and consultants who spoke to the American Lawyer about life at minimum-security prisons.
The lawyers will likely sleep in bunk bends in barracks-style facilities holding a mix of drug offenders, white-collar criminals and detainees nearing the end of their sentences. “There’s snoring and there’s shouting and there’s yelling and there’s loud music,” Hubbell told American Lawyer.
One anonymous lawyer recently released from a New York prison camp said usually a half-dozen lawyers were housed there. Although other inmates held them in high regard and often asked them for help with appeals, the lawyers still had to do menial jobs such as mopping floors.
“Your thought process atrophies,” the anonymous lawyer told the publication. “There’s very little of a constructive nature to do.”
Hubbell took advantage of exercise facilities and lost nearly 100 pounds in prison. Alan Ellis, a lawyer and consultant who has written a guidebook on federal prisons, says inmates should treat prison time as a sabbatical. “You can take those two years and add five years to your life physically, mentally and spiritually,” he told the legal magazine.
