More Letters from New York

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

I’ve been getting letters from a lawyer named Jeff Grant for some time now.

Jeff Grant was admitted to the New York State Bar in 1982. Twenty years later, he was disbarred. Like many lawyers, he loved the good life. Like many lawyers, he loved it too much. He cheated clients, he cheated the government, to support the good life. He lost his practice, his marriage, his freedom — nearly lost his life.

After prison, he literally got religion. He became a minister, and formed a prison ministry.

It’s the prison ministry that got me interested in his letters.

Grant, three years newly married, founded with his wife Progressive Prison Ministries some ten years ago. He calls it “the world’s first ministry devoted to serving the white collar justice community.” He particularly works with people who committed the same kinds of crimes he did, who feel the same kind of shame, remorse, and deep regret he says he did. He wants to help them walk, with him, a different path, “to learn and evolve into a new spiritual way of life and to reach out in service to others.”

Ten or eleven months ago, Jeff Grant got his law license back, and he’s using it to give himself a second chance, but more importantly, to give a bunch of other people second chances, in court. Other people whose dilemmas he understands fairly well, because he was one of them.

That’s sort of his motto, according to a recent email I got from him. “It Takes One To Know One,” was the subject line.

You can get to know one, here.

He might not get you out of prison. He might get you into heaven.