Incriminating Evidence

Sheldon Siegel, a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley's Boalt Law School, has been in private practice in San Francisco for over seventeen years. He lives in Marin County with his wife and twin sons and is at work on his third novel.b"We Have a Situation"br/bbr"The attorney general is a law enforcement officer, not a social worker."brbr- Prentice Marshall Gates III, San Francisco district attorney and candidate for California attorney general.brbrbMonday, September 6.br/bbrBeing a partner in a small criminal defense firm isn't all that it's cracked up to be. Oh, it's nice to see your name at the top of the letterhead, and there is a certain amount of ego gratification that goes along with having your own firm. Then again, you have to co-sign the line of credit and guarantee the lease. You also tend to get a lot of calls from collection agencies when cash flow is slow. In this business, founder's privilege extends only so far.brbrUnlike our well-heeled brethren in the high-rises that surround us, the attorneys in my firm, Fernandez and Daley, occupy cramped quarters around the corner from the Transbay bus terminal and next door to the Lucky Corner Number 2 Chinese restaurant. Our office is located on the second floor of a 1920s walk-up building at 553 Mission Street, on the only block of San Francisco's South of Market area that has not yet been gentrified by the sprawl of downtown. Although we haven't started remodeling yet, we recently took over the space from a now-defunct martial arts studio and moved upstairs from the basement. Our files sit in what used to be the men's locker room. Our firm has grown by a whopping fifty percent in the last two years. We're up to three lawyers.brbr"Rosie, I'm back," I sing out to my law partner and ex-wife as I stand in the doorway to her musty, sparsely furnished office at eight-