King County public defender Royce Roberts can’t recall the number of times his clients have asked him if he’s a real attorney.
It’s one of the “common insults” that clients have for public defenders, says Roberts, “that they are public pretenders instead of public defenders.” Some clients feel he is only pretending to care.
“Of course, everybody who works for an agency has to pass the bar just like everybody else,” said the Kirkland resident. “But somehow, some of the clients don’t feel that it’s any good if it’s free.”
Roberts explores this misconception, as well as the importance of our public defense system, in his book, “Public Pretender” that was recently released. He will read from his new book during an event at 7 p.m. May 31 at Parkplace Books.
A public defender for more than 20 years, his book began as a way of understanding what he was experiencing at juvenile court with his clients and the child welfare system.
Roberts, who got his law degree at Santa Clara University, works as a public defender for the county-funded non-profit agency, the Society of Counsel Representing Accused Persons (SCRAP).
He said the book is unusual because while many books are about criminal law, his novel is about dependency law, which he has practiced for about 15 years.
“Dependency law is where children’s protective services file a petition and remove children (from their family),” said Roberts. “Our state Supreme Court has said, yes, it’s not a criminal prosecution, but you’re entitled to a lawyer at public expense because the government is moving against you and your fundamental constitutional rights.”
In his book, the main character, a recent law school graduate whose ambition is to practice corporate law, winds up at a public defense firm representing people he didn’t know existed. Against his will, he grows as a person and a lawyer, sometimes landing in humorous or tragic situations.
“He wants to work as a corporate lawyer and this is the last thing that he wants to get into, so he’s feeling as if he’s a bit of a pretender himself,” said Roberts, who lives in the Bridle Trails neighborhood with daughter, Rachel and wife, Maura. “It’s almost a fish out of water story.”
He said the fish out of water aspect came naturally to him because when he graduated from law school, his assumption of what practicing law would be like was wrong.
“You find out it’s completely different and a lot of your assumptions about how people lead their lives is completely incorrect,” said Roberts. “For instance, if you don’t have a car, this is an enormous problem because the bus lines run from Seattle and back so you can spend four to six hours going from Kirkland to Renton and that’s something that I don’t think would have occurred to me as a problem that my clients would have before going to law school.”
What makes dependency law worthwhile for Roberts is the joy of seeing families come back together – a feeling he doesn’t get with criminal law, he says.
Roberts spent 10 years crafting “Public Pretender,” first writing the book in third person and then rewriting it in the first person, which made the characters come alive.
“So I’ve spent a lot of time with the characters and I think I need a break from them,” he laughed, noting he is currently working on his second novel, which will be completely different.
Robert says he hopes those who read his book will become aware of both the commonalities and differences with others.
“The emotions that the client feels in the book are the same emotions the main character feels and in some ways he’s shocked at the commonalities, as well as the differences,” said Roberts, adding his own anecdote. “One thing that I remember when I first started practicing that struck me as so different than my upbringing is I would go into juvenile court and I’d look around and I wouldn’t see any fathers. If there was one parent there it was overwhelmingly the mother and that never changed. So it is in some ways a very different world.”
