31/08/2025
I watched a clip last week from an interview of famous divorce lawyer James Sexton on Steven Bartlett’s podcast The Diary of a CEO. Sexton was talking about representing a pimp who had brutally abused a woman he had children with.
The woman, or victim, as Sexton calls her, had a state-assigned lawyer represent her. This lawyer was just out of school and didn’t know the specific phrasing needed to get an important photo into evidence—the photo of the face of the victim after she had been beaten up by the pimp. The judge was impatient and didn't help the inexperienced lawyer, which normally happens, according to Sexton.
With tears streaming down his face, Sexton recounted wondering why the judge was letting the lawyer for the woman flounder. He said he won when he should have lost because the woman was poor and she couldn’t afford to pay the $750 an hour fee for an experienced lawyer, which his client, the pimp, could.
The pimp patted him on the back as they walked out of the courtroom, saying that “a good lawyer is better than twenty stickup men” after the case got dismissed, and Sexton remembers thinking, “This is not a good day.”
Just because we can win, doesn't mean that we should.
