Exactly this, there's no subtle story here. Payne is a 23 year old, his parents are dumb *****, he'd go to his manager and say who's a good lawyer boss.
Lawyers are the biggest theives so word of mouth is the most common way to hire them.
A friend of mine was involved in a pretty open and shut case, immediately pled guilty and still got slugged with 50k in legal fees.
Not just the “dodgy” ones either…
Back when I was still Detectiv’ing, I had a couple of fellows on some rather serious charges (Dep Lib, GBH, Torture, Trafficking and so forth - drug debt related).
They had media darling and Civil Liberties “champion” Terry O’Gorman representing them… Day one of the Committal and the boys were looking sharp, nice suits, fresh ink, plenty of bling.
2 days in when things were clearly not going their way, the confidence had dropped and the sweats were beginning.
Afternoon, day 2, I had a brief chat to the one of them that was a semi-reasonable human being - they were being stung $50k a day, each on the “promise” the charges would be dismissed at committal… They couldn’t afford day 3 and were wigging out about what to do…
Day 3, Terry O’ recuses himself, legal aid queensland steps in and asked the Magistrate for the charges to be committed to the higher court by way of full hand up with no cross on the remaining 10 or so witnesses…
Only cost them $200k to reach that point… But I saved them at least another $100k, perhaps more to deliver the exact same result…
