Incarceration - Making the Best of It

The Wall Street Journal Law Blog here has an interesting discussion with a prison consultant who advised Bernie Madoff on his life in prison. Criminal tax lawyers -- including tax crimes defense lawyers -- have to cover this topic with clients from time to time (hopefully not too often). In my Federal Tax Crimes book, I include a snippet from a prior WSJ Law blog here about Bill Lerach reporting to prison. That blog too is worth a read, but I note particularly the following from the article:

Alan Ellis, a Bay Area lawyer who specializes in “post-conviction work” advises clients to treat prison time as a sabbatical. “You can take those two years and add five years to your life physically, mentally, and spiritually,” he says.

I will have to say that my limited anecdotal experience is that clients usually do not buy into this concept on the front end, but that some clients quickly determine to make the best use of their time. Of course, Madoff has more than two years to work with, but many tax crimes defendants have about that amount of time.