To those of you fed up with your lawyers or the system, let the judge know immediately. There is a saying in law, “If it’s not on the record, it didn’t happen,” even if it did. “On the record” means that your complaint is being recorded in court, or a document you wrote recording your complaint is placed in your public file.
Complaining to friends or family does not do any good, because your complaints are not “on the record.” For example, if your lawyer has not come to see you for months, has not brought you the discovery, or otherwise has not represented you in a manner that you think he or she should, tell the judge, in court or by letter. Otherwise, “it didn’t happen.” If you remain silent, a judge has no reason to believe anything is wrong.
Recently, several defendants were only days away from the start of their trial, but they had not seen their lawyers in months and had never had the opportunity to discuss their plea bargain. Time was growing shorter and soon they would be on trial, defending their lives (facing 30 years). They complained to their friends, they complained to their family, and they complained to everyone in the jail who would listen to them. But that meant nothing. As far as the judge knew, everything was fine because no one had told him any different. He assumed the lawyers were visiting their clients regularly, that they were discussing the cases frequently, and they were preparing for trial, none of which was true. The judge did not know that the defendants were complaining, so “it never happened.”
However, when you complain you must do it in a responsible manner. Do not exaggerate your complaint. Try to provide the judge with proof if it is available. For example, if a lawyer has not seen you in months, the jail will have records documenting how many times your lawyer has seen you. A lawyer cannot get around this. If the jail will not give you copies of those records, tell the judge and invite him to look at the records. But if you simply whine and exaggerate, you lose your credibility.
The judge is going to listen to your complaints very carefully, not just because he is concerned, but because he wants it “on the record” that you are claiming ineffective assistance of counsel. That may cause the appeals court to reverse a conviction, but if your claim of ineffective assistance is “not on the record, it didn’t happen.”