At seven-lawyer Austin criminal-defense firm Sumpter & Gonzalez, the search for mitigating evidence in a client's case be-gins shortly after he walks through the door. Partner David Gonzalez says the firm does a full assessment of a client to get his social history at the beginning of a case.

"We do that in every single case," Gonzalez says.

It's part of what Gonzalez says is the firm's "holistic approach" to representing clients, beginning from the time the firm agrees to rep-resent an individual and often continuing after the disposition of a case.

"Just because you're on 10 years probation, we don't say good-bye," he says.

One of the unique things about the firm is that it employs a social worker to gather mitigating evidence for clients' cases and, when necessary, to testify in court. The latest installment in the firm's evolution came in September, when it brought on three interns, including two in the social work field, to help with its unusual approach to representing clients.

Athan Schindler, the firm's social worker, says he develops a social-work case plan for a client that identifies problems, such as sub-stance abuse or mental health issues, recommendations for addressing those problems and the names of providers of rehabilitative services that best meet the client's particular need. Schindler says the firm's two social work interns, Annie Bryant and Kellen Ferguson, graduate students at the University of Texas, each have a small caseload of clients for whom they develop case plans. Bryant and Ferguson also assist in the firm's monitoring of clients to make sure they are going to counseling sessions, continuing with recommended treatment or seeing their probation offi-cers, Schindler says. St. Edward's University student Angela De'Angelo, the firm's criminal justice intern, along with Bryant and Ferguson, helps investigate clients' social histories, he says.

Austin solo Keith Hampton says he and other criminal-defense lawyers hire mitigation specialists to assist in looking for evidence that explains a client's criminal conduct. But Hampton says he knows of no attorney or firm who has a social worker on staff. "That's kind of cutting edge," he says.

Gonzalez says a firm attorney, frequently accompanied by Schindler, presents the plan for a client to the prosecutor on the case as part of the plea bargaining.

Sumpter & Gonzalez isn't the only firm that prepares such assessments in the early stages of cases. Demosthenes Lorandos of Loran-dos & Associates, headquartered in Ann Arbor, Mich., says he does prefiling analyses for some of his clients. Lorandos, who is a psychologist as well as an attorney, says much of his firm's work focuses on white-collar criminal defense.

While Lorandos says prefiling analysis may be typical in white-collar crime and also is used in sex-offense and drunken-driving cases, he adds, "But it's rare in street-level crime." Few clients can afford the services, Lorandos says.

Gonzalez writes in an e-mail that Sumpter & Gonzalez is probably one of the most expensive criminal-defense firms in Central Texas. "However, we invest the money into services and support staff for our clients instead of taking partnership distributions," he writes.

The idea of creating a firm that tries to help a client resolve the underlying problems that propelled him into the criminal justice sys-tem while addressing the legal issues stems from a Georgetown University Law Center fellowship program in which Corinne Sumpter, Gon-zalez's wife and partner, participated in for two years after she and Gonzalez graduated from Stanford Law School in 1999. Sumpter says, be-cause each participant in the program represented only a small number of indigent criminal defendants, she was able to take each case apart and determine how best to represent poor people.

Gonzalez returned to Austin in 1999 and opened the Gonzalez Firm. He says he first practiced civil rights and family law but later shifted to criminal defense work. After their marriage in October 2001, Sumpter joined Gonzalez in his practice, and the two filed the partner-ship paperwork for their firm in January 2002, Gonzalez says. Their firm now focuses on defending clients in misdemeanor offenses, white-collar crimes and juvenile cases.

According to Gonzalez, juvenile cases comprise about 20 percent of Sumpter & Gonzalez's caseload, and federal white-collar cases make up 10 to 15 percent. Criminal defense makes up the rest of the caseload.

Gonzalez says that for a while after he switched to criminal defense, he represented mostly indigent defendants through court ap-pointments. Sumpter says private-pay clients now make up about 70 percent of the caseload, and the fees from those clients enable the firm to continue taking court appointments.

Sumpter says probation officers traditionally have done investigative reports after a defendant has been convicted or adjudicated, but, with that approach, a client has to have a criminal record to get help with the underlying problems that brought him into the criminal justice sys-tem.

"Why can't we do it at the beginning?" she asks.

Evolving Approach

The firm has been developing its approach to representing clients over the past several years. One of the first steps came in 2004, when Sumpter & Gonzalez hired Jon Frodema, a former juvenile probation officer, to assist in assessing clients and their cases. Gonzalez says Frodema, who left the firm in late 2005 to move to Seattle, had approached every case from a social-work perspective.

Schindler joined Sumpter & Gonzalez as a social worker after receiving his master's degree from the University of Texas in May. Kristi Couvillon, a former social worker, joined the firm as an attorney in October 2007.

Couvillon says as a trained social worker she looks at a case from many different angles. "On paper, a case looks really bad, but there may be a lot of mitigating evidence," she says.

For example, Couvillon says, the client may have lived a crime-free life before committing the offense for which he is charged. Or the client may be struggling with a mental illness and is taking steps to resolve that problem, Couvillon says.

Schindler says an assessment not only involves getting the client's social history but also reading the client's body language and listen-ing to his speech patterns. In many instances, it is what the client is not telling him that can be important to a case, Schindler says.

His task of preparing the social-work plan for a client is made easier because the Sumpter & Gonzalez attorneys have been willing to work with him, Schindler says. The firm holds twice-weekly case conferences on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when the interns are at the firm.

Sumpter says that at the case conferences, the lawyers and the social work team review the case plans for clients. Part of what they look at, Sumpter says, is whether the social worker's recommendation fits in with what is happening legally in a case. For example, the client should hold off making any statements admitting guilt or apologizing for criminal conduct if his case is going to trial, she says.

Gonzalez says the lawyers also hold a weekly conference and, in addition, meet once a week with their paralegals to discuss cases.

"We don't always agree," Gonzalez says. "We're still learning how to work together."

A plan for a client includes a way to resolve any problem that contributed to the criminal conduct. If the client's problem is alcohol-related, Schindler says that he will try to get the client into an alcohol treatment program as well as in an Alcoholics Anonymous group. Schindler says, whatever the client's problem is, he tries to find a program tailored to help with that problem and gets the client started in the program.

"We're trying to be very proactive at the onset, not waiting for what prosecutors want us to do," Schindler says.

Couvillon says the firm typically includes with the social work plan any character letters that a client's neighbors, professors, priests or others have written about him. Gonzalez says the firm also seeks a letter from the victim of the client's crime. These go into a "good guy" file that a Sumpter & Gonzalez attorney will present to the prosecutor.

Sumpter says the file also includes any letter that the client has written to the victim to apologize for the harm he caused. The firm emphasizes the need for a client to take responsibility for his conduct.

Corby Holcomb, assistant trial director in the Travis County Attorney's Office, says Sumpter & Gonzalez attorneys are very thorough. "When they come to meet with the prosecutor, they have done their homework," Holcomb says.

Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley says he has worked with Gonzalez on a couple of cases. Bradley says Gonzalez came with a well-researched binder of information that provided an excellent background on the client that helped him as a prosecutor make a decision about the disposition of the case.

"It was so much better than a defense attorney coming in and whining," Bradley says.

Claire Dawson-Brown, director of grand jury intake for the Travis County District Attorney's Office, says she has worked with Sump-ter & Gonzalez on one case and also finds the firm's approach helpful.

"It allows us to make more educated plea bargains," she says.

In determining how to dispose of a case, Dawson-Brown says, a prosecutor wants to put away somebody who is dangerous. On the other hand, if the prosecutor can put someone back into society who will be productive, that's a good disposition, she says.

Sumpter says the firm may not be able to obtain a plea bargain in every case or, if a case goes to trial, prevent the client from going to prison.

"We can't work magic," she says, noting that a lot of the firm's clients are factually guilty of the offense for which they have been charged. "What we do have is an opportunity to change their lives."

Gonzalez says the firm monitors a client's progress in rehabilitative services or other programs. If a client needs medication for a men-tal health condition, the firm checks to see that the client takes the medication, he says.

Sumpter & Gonzalez's service to a client often is not restricted to representation in a criminal case. Jhon Brinegar, a 46-year-old Austin resident who says he has a bipolar disorder, says Gonzalez began representing him in 2004 in a divorce case and currently represents him in a pro-bation revocation sought by the Travis County Attorney's Office. In February, while represented by another attorney, Brinegar pleaded no contest to four counts of phone harassment in the Travis County Court-at-Law No. 4.

The court placed him on probation for a year, he says. When the county attorney's office filed for the revocation of his probation, he ended up in jail. Brinegar says Sumpter & Gonzalez obtained his release and took on his revocation case.

But representing him in court has not been the only service Sumpter & Gonzalez has provided Brinegar. Schindler has been helping him try to find a job and to get set up with Travis County Mental Health Mental Retardation Center to receive medications, Brinegar says. After he purchased a used pickup truck, Brinegar says that the firm assisted him in getting the paperwork he needed to transfer title.

"There's a lot of little bitty things they'll do for you," he says. "It's kind of like they're treating all their clients like family."