Legal Question in Criminal Law in California

Re: Conflict of Interest

I don't see even a hint of a conflict or of misrepresentation based upon these facts.

An attorney is not required to tell each client who his other clients are or how they came to him unless he has reason to think representing one of his clients will conflict with his duties to another.

The mere fact that your lawyer has other clients does not creat a conflict, and neither does the fact that he got them via a contract with his former colleagues at the PD's office.

This arrangement doesn't prove the absence of a conflict, but the burden is on you to show that there is a conflict and not on him to show that there isn't.

If the PD's office had rejected your case because it had a conflict then you would have some reason to be concerned (though their conflict would not necessarily taint your lawyer depending upon the type of contract he has with them). Your question suggests that this isn't what happened and that you simply hired a private attorney who had just left his old job with the PD.

The fact that your lawyer gets some of his work from the PD shouldn't concern you in the slightest. Few lawyers who are just starting their own practices have enough clients to keep them busy full-time -- especially if they had no established paying clients at their old jobs. It's only natural that he would seek work on a contract or overflow basis from other offices, including the PD.

Finally, you ask "how will I know if he is working as a p.d. or a private attorney?" The answer is simple -- unless and until you tell the court you can't afford your own lawyer anymore and get an order appointing him for you (which I presume is not going to happen) he will be representing you as your private lawyer.

Re: Conflict of Interest

You poor b******. You could have saved all that money and had the same lawyer. There's no conflict of interest. Just pray he puts his paying clients first (as well he may).