“I wish you would just hold me in contempt of court so I can get 24 hours of sleep,” Le said. “The system sucks, this job sucks, I am trying with every breath I have to get you what I need.”
I actually feel really sorry for the career attorneys who make the representations in court on the political apparatus’ behalf, whatever that may be and absentamy politicalas (Doubt? Look up the Hatch Act). The dedicated career-service professionals who carry out the job across administrations are some of the most dedicated and zealous people you can imagine.
A client’s attorney is not there to help with enforcing the law; they are there to know the law and to represent the interests of the client to the court. The court decides what is to happen and whether there is any punishment. If the client is appearing in court because they are alleged to have violated a court order, the client needs to instruct their attorney whether to argue that they did not, in fact violate the court order, or that they did but that they have an excuse which should mitigate punishment, or that the court order is invalid, or whatever.
Without that instruction, the lawyer can’t do very much.
The problem is that all social institutions require some level of co-operation from the people subject to their judgements. Sure, if you’re a violent criminal the police might arrest you and drag you kicking and screaming from the dock, but it’s not practical to do that to an entire government department - or an entire company for example. Once the government decides it’s not going to respect the rule of law, they can get away with a lot before any consequences catch up with them, because in the meantime the court system has to continue to presume innocence, to permit the argument of mitigating circumstances, to presume good faith, and so on.