Living on the Edge

Michael Makaroff spent fifty years going to court on an almost-daily basis. As a lawyer, he represented people at their best and their worst, handling murder, assault, theft, fraud, and other types of cases. He examined and cross-examined thousands of witnesses, experts, fraud artists, people with axes to grind, and on occasion, the innocent, all the time trying to win cases for clients. In this memoir, he reveals how the client/lawyer relationship works in case after case. With each client came the urgency to uncover something to help them maintain their freedom. When evidence couldn’t be found to provide another view of what took place, he had to convince the district attorney that his client deserved sympathy. When that failed, a trial was the last resort, and then he needed to focus on raising reasonable doubt. Get an insider’s view of what it’s like to practice law, from settlements to plea bargains to trials with the author’s memories of being a trial lawyer in Living on the Edge.