Did you realize that you can’t ask your clients to sleep with you in exchange for legal services? It’s strange but true! Be sure to brush up on this before your next big case or else you could end up with egg on your face.
Or, you know, in jail. Which is what happened to 29-year-old Miami attorney Juan Mercado, who was arrested on bribery charges for allegedly telling a woman that he could make her pending criminal case “go away” in exchange for sex.
In fairness to Mercado, that is something he actually might have been able to do because he wasn’t some random attorney looking to take on the woman’s case, but an assistant state attorney in Charlotte County. While he’s since moved on to set up his own criminal defense practice, investigators say that when he was still working for the government, Mercado abused his position to get access to the defendant in this case:
His arrest followed an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, which alleged Mercado had sex with a defendant facing domestic battery charges.
Mercado was not assigned to the woman’s case, but accessed her records and gave her advice, according to the FDLE.
Some of you puritans out there will cluck your tongues over this fee arrangement, but when you think about it, Biglaw firms have been fucking their clients for years.
Sex in Exchange for Legal Services? Miami Lawyer Arrested on Bribery Charges [Daily Business Review]