Any lawyer worth their salt will acknowledge the importance of being an advocate for their client. In fact, according to Daniel Guerrero and Zachary Bauer, Meshbesher & Spence’s criminal defense team, it’s a major part of the job. In this roundtable discussion, both lawyers talk about what being an advocate means to them.


Nine times out of ten, people’s biggest complaint about their lawyer is that they simply didn’t care about their client. The client feels as if they’ve been treated as a number—like the lawyer didn’t put in sufficient time to get to know them, their concerns, and their families.
At Meshbesher & Spence, our lawyers recognize the importance of compassion. For anyone dealing with a criminal defense case—often a very stressful time—they should have someone that understands them and their situation, and has compassion for their wellbeing both in and out of the courtroom.
Some of the key takeaways expressed in this roundtable that set Meshbesher & Spence attorneys apart from the rest are that:

We make sure the prosecutor sees our client as a human being rather than just a name on a piece of paper.

We convey a sense of humanity—that our client is someone’s brother, mother, sister or uncle, that they’re involved in the community beyond the circumstances of their case.

We show our clients that we care for him or her, and that our concern goes beyond the courtroom. Whenever possible we try to follow our clients after their sentencing to see what’s going on in their life, giving them a call six months to a year later just to see how they’re doing.

We don’t just go off the file. The file we receive from the prosecutor’s office is thirty pages long. But if we’re going to contain the way we view our client to those thirty pages than we’ve already conceded, to some extent, what’s going to happen. It’s what’s beyond those thirty pages that tells us what our client’s life story is and how they wound up in their particular circumstances and what led to their current legal situation. Laying that context helps us to negotiate more successfully, allowing us to show the jury the larger picture beyond those often brief moments of bad decision making that landed the accused in our office in the first place.

If you’ve been charged with or are being investigated for a crime, call our office immediately. We offer 24 hour availability seven days a week and charge you nothing for your first consultation, whether at our office or in jail. When so much is at stake, you can’t afford to choose anyone but the very best and well-respected criminal lawyers. Call the Minnesota criminal defense lawyers you can trust at Meshbesher & Spence.