A criminal defense lawyer may be employed by a state or local court, work on a freelancer basis, or be hired on a permanent contract by an individual, organization or company, for the purpose of representing them in legal court cases. The job of the criminal defense lawyer is to present their clients’ cases to the judge and jury (where applicable), and minimize the legal consequences for their clients by making sure all the facts surrounding the case are properly examined and evaluated by the court. A criminal defense lawyer would normally try to find a precedent related to the case in question, and if that fails they would usually attempt to organize the evidence in a way that justifies their client’s actions.
Becoming a criminal defense lawyer requires education at law school. One of the things seen as beneficial for law students is that there are no strict requirements towards their Bachelor’s degree – that is, a student can enter a Master’s law course from any educational background, even an engineering one – provided they’ve got sufficiently high grades. A lawyer’s reputation is directly tied to the percentage of cases they’ve managed to win.
As a criminal defense lawyer, one can earn between $60,000 and $120,000 annually, depending mostly on the cases they’re taking up and their success rate. Since a lawyer basically works on a commission basis (taking a percentage of the sum related to the court’s decision), they’re inclined to take clients with more complicated cases as well, on the premise that they offer them a higher potential for earning.