Connecticut Public Defender Thinks Seattle DUI Lawyer Nick Juhl Is a Douchebag

Wallingford DUI lawyer Nick Juhl stands accused of one count of douchebaggery.

​UPDATE: Juhl says he didn't write the article. Details after the jump.

I know, I know. That headline makes you rethink all you thought you knew about the practice of law. Lawyers? Douchebags? But it's true: Someone somewhere thinks a Seattle DUI lawyer is worthy of being called a bag.

That someone is Gideon, a Connecticut public defender with a blog. Because he's a public defender, Gideon gets a little prickly when anyone suggests that government workers like himself are too overworked or under-qualified to get the job done.

Which is why he broke out the d-word for one local attorney.

If only Gideon's job was this exciting.

​Here's the rundown. There's this website called BestInformationAbout.com. BIA looks like Ask Jeeves, except that a free log-in is all it takes to write an "expert" article. And the site's tag line ("The Best Articles About Everything") is so grandiose it makes BIA look like a scam created by some Romanian 10th-graders.

Anyway, on Saturday an author named Justin Steely wrote an article entitled "Should I Get A Public Defender or Hire a Private Seattle DUI Attorney?" And since you can already see where this is going, you might not be surprised to learn that Steely's advice for those charged with a DUI in the Emerald City is to find a private attorney who knows the ABCs of BAC.

It's completely advisable to not select a public defender. Here's why. A public defender will not necessarily be the best nor have the resources to complete a fair and impartial trial. On top of that, a public defender usually is not going to have enough time to dedicate solely to your case and this could cause troubles such as missed details or deadlines when it comes to protecting you. So selecting private counsel in the Seattle area is recommended.

This is where Gideon comes in. Being a curious cat, Gideon found that both Steely and his pseudonym looked made up. And at the bottom of the article, Gideon found a link to Wallingford firm Lovik & Juhl.

According to legal site Avvo, partner Nick Juhl specializes in DUI cases. So it looks as if Gideon's claim that either Juhl or Lovik "created these pseudonyms to drive traffic to their site (and unnecessarily trash public defenders along the way)" may be spot on.

I've got e-mails in to both Lovik and Juhl to formally confirm or deny the d-bag claims. In the meantime, we can all only hope that the lawyers will have an equally mature comeback for Gideon, the scorned public defender who pulled back the curtain on the mighty and all-powerful Oz.

May I suggest, "poopyhead"?

UPDATE: In an e-mail, Juhl says he's been called worse names than "douchebag," but denies being responsible for this mix-up.

First, thanks for pointing this out. Some unfortuntate comments about me, I suppose, but I can assure you I have been called much worse.

I really haven't a clue who may have written this (we have no staff, just two attorneys, neither of whom publish on any site like the one you have linked to here.) My guess would be that one of the services we use to try and drive traffic to our website has done this to try and make themselves appear more valuable to us. We have recently cut ties with at least one agency that we found were using fake names to give us "client reviews." I didn't feel right about that, either.

Truth is, about 30% percent of my work is done as a public defender. I am hired by the King County Office of the Public Defender to handle cases in which the other public defense agencies have a conflict of interest.

In a follow-up conversation, Juhl's partner David Lovik admitted that the firm had once contracted with Yellowpages.com. But the lawyers quit advertising with the online phonebook after they found out that someone was writing fake client reviews and posting them online.

Lovik says the most likely culprit is a guy they hired to redesign their website. But the lawyer says he's "just a kid." And doesn't want to reveal his name nor hurt his reputation based on what he sees as a misguided attempt to help the firm.

It's hard to believe a guy who pays his mortgage by acting as a public defender would bash them in print. And even harder to believe that a J.D. could write so poorly. Based on those two pieces of evidence, and the likely alibi that this is all the work of a young man trying to impress his bosses, we find the defendant, Nick Juhl, not guilty on the count of douchebaggery.