Allison Margolin on Breaking Stereotypes and Advocating for Cannabis Legalisation

Oh Hi, everyone. My name is Allison Margolin. I’m a criminal defence attorney. That’s my day job. And I’m also an author. And I write about legal issues, you know, ranging from drug decriminalisation to the politics of the marijuana movement. Those are some of my areas. And I defend people from everything from marijuana to murder. And I’ve been an attorney for 22 years this December.

Well, my parents were both, they’re both attorneys. They were criminal defence attorneys, both when I was born and my dad’s data criminal defence lawyer. My mom ended up, you know, switching to family law, but they both really enjoyed what they did. So I found it inspiring. And when I was young, I also became, you know, aware of the issues that were still ongoing with the war on drugs. And I felt a calling to deal with them.

I do. I practise criminal defence, doing like, almost exclusively criminal defence and appellate criminal. But I still have, you know, a couple little municipal law matters that I’m handling, but it’s almost all criminal defence.

My target audience? so my niche, yeah. yeah, yeah, yeah. So basically, like, I would say my target audience are people who are among, because that’s like my niche is so like, my practice all over the state of California, here in Los Angeles, I’m actually pretty good friends with the DA and he’s very progressive. And so I have some cases, but I don’t, I have like, I don’t know, 30 % of my business is here.

And the rest of my business is between Manteca and Siskiyou County. But in Siskiyou County, that’s like where I have most of my practice. I represented the community leader of the Hmong on a criminal case. And then I ended up doing a civil rights case where the county had, based on what we believe was discriminatory purposes, had basically truncated the water rights of people were Asian Americans there. And then from that case, which we ended up succeeding in, that kind of revitalised my criminal practice. So most of my clients are up there and that’s like 60 % of my practice are among, they’re from Minnesota, Fresno, Kimnasesquieu County. So that’s kind of like my target audience, I would say. And they’re friends, kind of what I mostly represent right now.

I don’t know my, I don’t really know what my competitors do or don’t do. But I know that I try everything possible, but I think is, has even a remote chance of succeeding for my clients, including doing writs and appeals, when I think it’s necessary, even if I have to do them for free, which I do oftentimes, the writs. And somehow through like trying all these various things, I oftentimes, make like, you pretty magical things happen. I don’t really, you know, I haven’t been a criminal client of any of my competitors, so don’t really know what they do or don’t do. But I know what I do. So that’s been kind of my, I’ve had a lot of, you know, amazing, I think, results. And I don’t even know how sometimes, except that I just, I definitely can see the outcome I want. And I try pretty much everything to get to it.

And I think that I’m a lot of times underestimated, which is, I still find like kind of amusing. It’s like, since I’ve been a lawyer and out of law school, I’m a Harvard law graduate. And before I graduated law school, never was, I felt like my, the way I was seen was like an intellectual, mostly my whole life, because I was a good student. So when I became a lawyer, I think that a lot of people who have different personalities in and outside the courtroom. Like in the courtroom, there are certain, I guess you might say, versions of professionalism. And outside there, let’s say different. And I’m pretty much, I would say pretty similar in and outside the courtroom. So I think that makes me relatable to juries. And also I’ve learned that my opponents oftentimes underestimate me because they take my humanity for possibly weakness or they underestimate I think my intelligence.

So that’s something that I’ve, I don’t really capitalise on it, but I’ve, think it’s worked to my benefit. So those are, and that’s, can tell that’s what I offer. So I can create magical situations that are, you know, pretty awesome. And I try everything. And I think the client also feels validated by our experience together. First of all, we do get good results, but I treat people like, you know, I, do think like everyone’s the same. I don’t talk down to people. I don’t criticise them or judge them. So I think that like the experience of my representation also, you know, empowers people and makes them feel good about themselves, which has a positive effect. And it’s probably something that one may or may not recognize, you know, this, why they might like my representation. But I think that’s part of it too.

Well, the firm I’m going to hope to keep, I’d like to get this position in Siskiyou County actually on the indigent panel, which is where I would like work there doing, it’s like the alternate public defender panel. And I could do that like one, at least one week a month. My profession, you know, I would like to have like more steady income is like on a real specific level. Like I have some appellate work I’m doing for the County and then I want to do this work at Siskiyou. So like having more steadiness and not just a feast or famine, which is always kind of like how it isn’t criminal, but setting up things where I have more, you know, revenue coming in that’s kind of like assured would be good and developing more in Siskiyou County. And then, you know, kind of, I mean, I have a couple of pretty serious federal cases involving a fentanyl person who sold fentanyl annoyingly and a Marine ended up dying. So I’m like, you know, That kind of case with that specific defendant I enjoy.

This, the kind of new era is going to be these ketamine defences. And I, I’m very close to that issue personally cause one of my family members is like a pretty bad ketamine addict currently and, and, and became one at rehab. So, you know, if that wasn’t the case, I probably would be saying like, I’d love to represent a ketamine doctor right now. A doctor charged with one of these ketamine cases, like Matthew Perry or like an assistant or the drug dealer. And not to say I still don’t think those people should be prosecuted criminally, but I don’t really want to represent anybody like that right now.

So I don’t know, I have to see. And then my other ambition is I’d like to get my book, like I need to make some money from my book that I wrote so that I can like write a second book and get an amount of advance that I can actually live off of so that I could then devote six months to writing my second book, which I already started to outline. But I really need to get my first one making money so I can like, you know, contribute time to like writing the second one. So it’s kind of the Siskiyou County world is kind of where I’m at. And then we’ll see what happens with LA District Attorney election. My friend is running free election. The numbers, he’s the incumbent, but then I don’t know what’s going to happen. He seems pretty confident. George Gascon, but the polling is not great. But why that’s relevant to my career is that if he doesn’t get elected, I want to see what he does. Maybe you know, like one of my dreams would be to work with him on policy.

So like fantasy world, like if George Casagon doesn’t get reelected DA, him and I can like do some kind of like policy nonprofit work on like, you know, basically what are the federal, you know, what are the federal legal issues that are like getting in the way of like people being able to stop being drug addicts and that kind of stuff and policy issues with people who are violent offenders, you know, all sorts of cool stuff. So I’d like to do more policy, have a bigger presence even in Siskiyou County and have like steady, more steady sources of revenues. Those are kind of my.

Well, here’s the thing that’s kind of like, I don’t know, maybe this means I have potential. So the last couple of years, so the book came out like August of 2022 and I’ve barely done anything to promote the book or myself since then. Because, so my practice I have now is like based on referrals. So like, definitely like, I don’t even know. My sister has a book out that like, but she’s like actually got, she has like a successful book out and her, it’s on psychedelics in the religious Jewish world. That’s like her beat. It’s called exile and ecstasy. But her book, like her publisher sent her on this like worldwide tour.

I haven’t done anything that’s, I haven’t gotten any money beyond my advance yet. So I have to figure out like what to do to promote it. Just that like my, I had, you know, stuff going on. Like I had an arbitration with my former law partner to kind of, and then I’ve had like, you know, to kind of resuscitate my practice. So I haven’t done much to promote myself last couple of years, but I have had some like pretty awesome results in the last couple years, like two years. So those kind of, think have led to my fortunate ability to retain a practice. So like last year, I settled the case, you versus county of Siskiyou, which involved the Asian American discrimination and we won. We got a settlement from the county. And that way we won. And so that I think spoke to my abilities.

And then I’ve done some pretty awesome like appellate practice this year with bail issues. Like I got this one guy who was also among in Siskiyou County out on an ankle bracelet when he was previously in on like no bail, like as if like no bail and capital murder type. Like in California, no bail is supposed to be reserved for capital murder. He was charged with a pretty serious offences, domestic violence, witness intimidation, false imprisonment, but I was able to get him out on an ankle bracelet. And so like it’s been kind of like through my I think work successes, which is like pretty awesome because you know, it’s in the beginning of my practice, like I had to advertise quite a, like in the beginning of my practice, the way I like got known was I had these kind of irreverent advertisements in the local kind of like trashy newspaper. And that got me kind of attention. And it was like, I said like Harvard Law grad want to smoke pot on probation. And that was like in the way beginning.

And then that got me attention like the Daily Journal, like the legal newspaper in California and the LA Times and then that kind of promoted me but fortunately the last couple years my work like since I’m in like a small county, I’m in a county it’s actually very big geographically but only 40 ,000 people and I think it’s like about 36 ,000 square acres. So I think you know things kind of came together in that but I haven’t really done much promotion outside of just, you know, not too much the last couple of years, but I would like to figure out like, I mean, if I could be on more podcasts, bought this called Just Dope. I’d like to be on like serious radio, but I don’t know. I just haven’t done, I haven’t really figured it out quite yet.

Well, I think people seem to enjoy the book. It’s like my memoirs. It’s about my own experience with drugs, my own experience growing up in the cannabis legalisation movement. And then it gets into the politics of marijuana doctors. I encourage people to buy my book, but my dad and my sister also have books out that you could read together. My dad has a book out, they’re all on Amazon. My dad just called down for the cause and it’s self -published and it’s about his career, which is much more interesting actually than mine.

I recommend people buy that first. But he was like one of the first lawyers to advocate for legalisation of which was in 1966 and started, like was the beginning, started that movement and ended up going to India and meeting with like, meeting this guru and became good friends with Baba Ramdas, who’s Richard Alpert, who wrote a book, Be Here Now. And my dad ultimately represented Timothy Leary on his escape trial. His book is all about that. And my sister wrote one.

And I don’t know, you know, I think I encourage you to get mine and of course my sisters and my dad’s if you’re interested in kind of reading about, know, 1950s through modern day, like what’s happening in the collective unconscious and the world of drugs, the world of politics, doctors. And I take cases all over the country, you know, and if anybody ever needs me, I don’t represent informants, so that’s why I only do a couple, one to two federal cases at a time, because most of times people end up having to become informants. But yeah, I’m happy to take cases anywhere, and I encourage you to get my book and my family’s also.

Thank you, I appreciate you interviewing me. Have a great day. Bye.