Forgive me, solicitor - confessions to a criminal attorney by his clients

How many times in the past fifty-five years have I uttered those timeless words: "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned"? I remember having to make up sins at first in order to have some to confess. I wasn't mature enough to know that making them up is a sin in itself, a fraud on the very sacrament of reconciliation. "How cute," people may have said of me, but it was still a sin to have done that.

Over the past fifty-five years I have known many other sins, too. It sometimes seemed that, by the time I learned that one thing was sinful, I had already moved onto another sin, bigger and better. Like most of us, I didn't intend to grow up knowing sin, but it worked out that way. And I have come to know real guilt, too. There was a time when I considered the whole day wasted if I hadn't felt guilty at least once.

About twenty-five years ago I became a criminal trial lawyer. Since then I have handled a lot of cases having to do with drunk driving, shoplifting, assault and battery, probation violations, and driving-license hearings. Most people from these whereabouts don't think much of my clients. Frankly, most of my clients don't think much of my clients, either. "Trailer trash" is one of the kinder phrases that comes to their minds.

As I said, I have come to know guilt and not only by my own acts but by the acts of my clients also. Not that I was there while they were committing their defalcations (I was too busy committing my own sins, thank you), but because often my clients confess to me afterwards. Clients do that, you know - confess to their lawyers. And they have paid me serious money to listen to their confessions. (Nowadays the church can call it reconciliation if it wants, but I work in a criminal context. Out here, in the real world, we call it confession.)

It occurs to me that there is a basic asymmetry in all this, because many of my clients are barely able to afford my services. The courts may decide that my clients make too much money and can pay for their own lawyers, but my clients and I know better. Sometimes I think that judges do not live in the real world.

The asymmetry is this: Why should clients pay me money they don't have, so I'll hear their confessions, when an honest-to-God alternative - so to speak - is just up the street, at the parish church where I, and several other criminal lawyers whom I know, go to confession?

I've been inside that church on many Saturday afternoons to offer my own confession, and the place is practically deserted. The priest inside the confessional is sort of like the Maytag repairman, the loneliest guy in town. He's eager and experienced and doesn't cost anything. In fact, the church he represents is 2,000 years old and has been hearing confessions much of that time. Let me put it to you this way: The church is better at confessions than I am, and its services cost nothing.

So, why do the clients - who would have cheerfully offered their confessions up the street a decade or so ago - now come to me? I'll tell you why in one simple phrase: It's the cult of the legal. The reality is simple: The law is where it's at.

In a time of happy memory, the church had a near monopoly on earthly mystery and power, leaving people slack-jawed in awe and wonder. Today, there is another church - the law - and, as a criminal trial lawyer, I am one of its most visible priests. If you are caught up by the wickedness and snares of the devil, everyone says you should go see your lawyer, not your priest. And since "everybody says it, it must be true."

I've heard at least 2,500 confessions over the past twenty-five years and offered my own numerous times, so it's fair to say that I am a connoisseur of fine confessions. That's why I'm qualified to tell you this: Don't you believe what all these people are saying, not for one Catholic minute. Confession to a lawyer doesn't hold a candle to confession to a priest. A lawyer might be able to keep you out of jail, at least for a while, but the priest on behalf of the church can offer you what no lawyer can possibly provide: Forgiveness of sins, love, and eternal life.

You'll never see "forgiveness of sins, love, and eternal life" in a retainer agreement with a lawyer. For that matter, when was the last time you heard your lawyer say "absolvo te"? As a lawyer, I've been terribly tempted numerous times to use that Latin phrase after hearing a client's confession, but that would be a sin, wouldn't it? And if you start out your confession to me with the words, "Bless me, lawyer, for I have sinned," then we are both in deep trouble.

Do us both a favor: Take your confession to the priest, or at least give him a ten-day option or the right of first refusal. If that doesn't work, then give me a call.

Laurence J. Gillis practices law in Exeter, New Hampshire.

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