Q&A

A former public defender’s lessons for law students

By CHARLES ANZALONE

Published July 26, 2024

Farina Barth enters her classroom with several years of courtroom experience in what can be the rawest legal setting there is.

Barth, a lecturer in the School of Law who teaches first-year Legal Analysis, Writing, and Research, was a public defender for the Legal Aid Bureau of Buffalo for 3½ years, occupying a front-row seat to those in their darkest days standing before the judicial system. From a young man incarcerated for stealing candy bars from the corner store, to the addict who fed his heroin addiction until it took his life, to a father mixed up with the wrong people found with an illegal firearm, Barth fiercely defended her clients.

These encounters with the judicial gray area between right and wrong — all involving people who could not afford an attorney — left her with fierce convictions and experience many people may never understand.

First, Barth has an educated and unflinching belief in legal aid, especially in today’s judicial system. It’s why she has joined the Legal Aid Bureau of Buffalo’s Board of Directors. She hopes the bureau will become the primary provider of indigent legal defense in a unified public defender system, as is other New York counties. She deeply believes in the cause.

Second, she brings real-life experience of being part of the front lines of Buffalo’s criminal justice system to her students. If experience — with all its vagaries and ambiguity — is an educational catalyst, Barth provides a valuable example to the law school community.

Third, Barth is emphatic about basic communication and acting with decorum and integrity. Clients want to understand what is going on, she says, not have an attorney who can’t get by the legalese. “Don’t forget the person you were before you became a law student,” she tells her classes. Talking to clients like a normal person, being able to use good grammar in briefs and acting professional throughout the process are foundations of her instruction.

“Leading with empathy,” she says, “has made me the lawyer I am today.”

Barth spoke with UBNow about her experiences as a public defender and what that brings to her students.

Why is it important for law students to get grounded experience in court?

The courtroom brings life to cases we read in textbooks and helps students see how the work they do in the classroom affects real people. Everyone may not want to be a litigator, but courtroom experience helps students and attorneys think faster on their feet and become better advocates.

What is the value of the public defender system?

The right to a legal defense is rooted in the Constitution; it is a foundation of our judicial system. For the system to “work,” there needs to be representation for both sides, including the accused, who are innocent until proven guilty. Getting in trouble or accused of a crime involves many moving parts, but one of the best qualities of our judicial system is that no matter circumstance, those accused of a crime will have a defense. I represented hundreds of indigent clients who otherwise could not afford a lawyer. Now, I am committed to supporting public defenders through serving on the board at Legal Aid. I hope to use my experience to strengthen and support indigent legal services in Buffalo and beyond.

How can you translate your experience as a public defender to first-year law students?

I use my experience from practice as much as I can to bring the material to life. For example, one of the capstone experiences of our first-year legal writing class is oral arguments. Students are often nervous for their first mock oral argument. I try and ease their nerves by sharing my own experience trying cases and arguing in court. I share pitfalls I have seen in legal briefs when teaching grammar. We read cases I have cited in my briefs from when I was practicing. Those cases are then used for class assignments based on fact patterns I created by modifying facts from real cases I have seen in practice.

Give us three lessons based on your experiences working for Legal Aid.

First, clear and concise legal writing is the cornerstone of any good lawyer. You cannot comprehensively represent your client if you are not skilled in legal writing. Second, the best advocates have put in the work. This means you should know every fact in the record, have researched and found the most important cases, and know every case you have included in your brief. There is nothing worse than the judge asking about a case you have cited in your memo only to have to read a quick summary of it. Third, the importance of professionalism and empathy. My clients trusted me to represent them, but that trust wasn’t built in a day. Always treating my clients with empathy and respect led to more trusting attorney-client relationships and ultimately enhanced my ability to represent my clients.

Your research paper “Standardizing Exoneration Compensation Statues” is due for publication by Drexel Law Review in February. Why did you decide to work on this?

While a student in UB’s School of Law, I was in the inaugural class of the Innocence and Justice Project. Wrongful conviction work has stuck with me since. I also represented clients who believed they were wrongfully convicted. I have found that the procedure for wrongful convictions differs significantly depending on the state of incarceration. There is a lot of research on this topic. However, there was less research on what happened after a person was found to be wrongfully convicted. All those years lost had to add up to something. I found that a person wrongfully convicted of a crime spent about, on average, 12 years incarcerated for a crime they did not commit. Yet for those 12 years, the government compensated them as little as $20,000 to as much as $2.4 million. This difference sparked my article. I am hopeful it will help efforts to reform and standardize compensation laws.