Stuck in a California prison with a life sentence and little hope? A lawyer who grew up in Palo Alto, went to Princeton and Berkeley Law, once worked as a prosecutor in the Bronx, and who marketed himself as “California’s topranked habeas attorney … in the top 1% among California’s criminal lawyers” would gladly help.

The lawyer, Aaron Spolin, told prospective clients, most of them incarcerated for violent crimes including murder, that the “progressive Los Angeles [County] District Attorney George Gascón could move to free them in less than a year under one new resentencing law.”

“He got me for $3,000,” said San Quentin resident Steven Brooks about Spolin. “He made a lot of promises and then delivered nothing. Everybody should know that the guy is a crook.”

“He pushes people and tries to give them hope when there is no hope and he knows there is no hope,” said a retired public defender, as quoted in an article by Harriet Ryan, an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times.

Freedom through Spolin had a steep price: Resentencing ran at about $10,000, his other fees “could run north of $40,000.” Did high fees assure success? Not in Spolin’s cases. “None of Spolin’s attempts, for which families paid about $10,000 each, appear to have been successful,” said Ryan’s article.

San Quentin resident Anthony Oliver, 59, a nonviolent three-strike lifer with a 25-years-to-life sentence for stalking without a restraining order, has served for 26-and-a-half years. In 2022, he hired Spolin to do a commutation application and a resentencing petition.

“After all that I have done and accomplished, I thought I had a good chance to go home. Spolin made it seem like relief would happen. After I paid $20,000 to Spolin, the governor never replied. I never heard from Spolin again.”

Oliver added, “Lawyers should be fair and truthful. I believe Spolin has taken advantage of me and others, due to our desire to be free.”

In 2021, San Quentin resident Troy Varnado, 45, paid Spolin $18,500 for a commutation application and a resentencing petition. The account of his dealings with Spolin sounded almost identical to Oliver’s account — and so did the outcome: Spolin failed. Varnado said he regretted ever having dealt with Spolin.

On August 29, 2024, the Times published an article about disciplinary charges over “offering false hope” of freeing incarcerated clients. In this article, Ryan wrote the state bar association “accused Spolin of 18 violations of the rules of professional conduct for attorneys and the state business code, including moral turpitude and unconscionable fees.”

Ryan quoted the bar’s top prosecutor, Chief Trial Counsel George Cordona, as having stated, “Offering false hope to those in dire straits for one’s own financial gain is contrary to a lawyer’s responsibilities.”

Ryan said Spolin had signed-on over 2,000 incarcerated clients.

Ryan’s writing depicted Spolin as exhibiting a unique combination of exaggeration bordering on massive fraud and of blundering verging on gross ineptitude. According to the articles, Spolin excelled at the single task of offering hope to desperate incarcerated persons by making them believe in the expectation of lights at the ends of their legal tunnels.

What took Spolin on this course of allegedly unethical gain?

Spolin used to work for McKinsey & Co., a once unsullied but now scandal-ridden management consultancy. McKinsey played key roles in the collapse of Enron and in the 2008 financial crisis, said Dana Sanchez of Moguldom.com. Several McKinsey partners and its CEO also went to prison, mostly for the business sin of insider trading. On November 12, 2024, the firm paid $650 million to settle its role in marketing of OxyContin. Ryan’s articles suggested that Spolin might have learned the tricks of his trade at McKinsey.

The Economist characterized McKinsey and a few firms like it as “snake-oil salesmen, bamboozling chief executives and politicians with management gibberish and glossy charts while gorging on fat fees.” Gerben Wierda of EAPJ.org assigned a word to professional work that chiefly benefits the professional: he called it “parasitic.” Ryan’s articles suggested the same about Spolin.

Spolin charged a lot for very little: $3,000 for a case-review, an “innovation” Ryan called “McKinsey-inspired.” Most lawyers would conduct case reviews free-of-charge, said one of Ryan’s articles, and a few of them charged nominal fees of perhaps $500 at the most. In typical management consulting fashion, Spolin told clients what they already knew.

Outsourcing, another common McKinsey stratagem, allowed Spolin to decentralize his law office into lowoverhead co-workspaces and to hire lawyers from as far away as the “Philippines and other developing countries making about $10 per hour.” Such low-paid contract lawyers “had little or no experience in criminal appeals,” said Ryan.

Most of them had no California law license. Ryan quoted one such contract lawyer, who worked for Spolin remotely from the Philippines, as having said that he had “no prior training in appellate law or California’s criminal justice reforms.” McKinsey has a satellite office in the Philippines.

“Habeas petitions are long shots by their nature with failure rate estimated as high as 98%,” said the article, yet the developing-world attorney “recommended two services to almost every family — commutation applications and pursuit of resentencing through the D.A. — because they theoretically applied to every inmate.” He added, “There was nothing to lose. That was the justification. These were already incarcerated people,” he said.

Spolin deviated from McKinsey in one way: the firm liked to deal with very large businesses that could easily afford the fees. Spolin, though, dealt with clients whose family members had to work second and third jobs and borrowed on credit cards to pay him, Ryan’s investigation reported.

Some Spolin clients did report success. Ryan’s article quoted Darrell Tittle, Jr., as having had a “magical experience” in dealing with Spolin with a resentencing. Tittle went free after 20 years in prison. Although Ryan at first reported that none of Spolin’s resentencing efforts had succeeded, this case contradicted her earlier report.

A story by PRNewswire says that Spolin’s efforts overturned the 1993 conviction of an unnamed client referenced only by case number. Thrice denied parole on a 26-years-tolife sentence, Centinela State Prison released the Spolin client in 2022.

SQRC resident Ferdinand Flowers, 42, said he maintained his faith in Spolin.

“He did not promise me a lot, but what he did promise, he delivered,” said Flowers, “He came recommended by two of my friends at a previous prison, and they told me he is very professional. He did more for me than my last lawyer did.”

Flowers said he had Spolin file a petition for resentencing. “He charges from $9,000 to $12,000. He finally finished, it took him about 6 months. He sent me a computer draft and he said that I could add to it if I wanted to and he would give me his input.

“He told me from the beginning, ‘I can’t guarantee anything,’ but he promised he would do the best he could to represent me. He did give me some discounts on petitions and a couple free things he would do.”

The McKinsey-inspired Spolin business model produced huge profits while dashing the hopes of many incarcerated persons. The scale of Spolin’s activities appeared staggeringly high. Other firms have begun to copy Spolin’s business model and at one point, Spolin wanted to expand his brand into Texas, New York, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Such expansion strategies sounded as if they came directly from the McKinsey playbook. Attempts to reach Spolin have failed.

McKinsey has always touted its expertise in adapting to changing business environments and Spolin might recently have adapted his strategy. One of Ryan’s articles said he has reinvented himself as a habeas expert. “Spolin has started recommending families pursue a new reform passed last year that allows inmates to challenge their convictions on racial discrimination grounds.”

The cost: $24,700.