Your best defense is a call away Mark E. Kamish - Of Counsel
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Mark E. Kamish - Of Counsel

Founding Partner, Board-Certified* Criminal Trial Specialist, Of Counsel

Board-Certified* Criminal Trial Specialist by the National Board of Trial Advocacy.

In 2004, I was a full-time public defender in downtown Indianapolis. I’d been a manager at a Fortune 500 company, and before that, an Army Officer. But in my new role, I was helping people in trouble and fighting for justice. Being a public defender had given me a new lease on life. I had found my life’s purpose. I was energized, passionate, and fully engaged.

But on one particular summer day in 2004, I was not feeling quite so passionate and engaged. I was leaving the hot, sticky, dreary, and depressing confines of the Marion County Jail after having had a very difficult conversation with a client of mine. He was angry. It had been a long week, and my client had not been the first to express his displeasure with me. I had fought earlier in the week with myriad prosecutors, judges, policemen, civilian witnesses, other clients, their families.

This hellish week ended with an aggressive corridor confrontation with the angry boyfriend. He was extremely upset that a jury didn’t believe that his girlfriend was raped by my client. He was clearly unhappy with the jury’s not guilty verdict, and made that fact known to me when he poked me in the chest and yelled, “How do you live with yourself?!” I was tired, worn out and fed up with all this shit.

As I pushed the down button of the jail’s elevator, a frail hand stuck through the elevator door, further delaying my departure from the place I couldn’t wait to leave. I audibly sighed and clearly must have looked annoyed as an elderly man stepped on to the elevator. He was dressed in a light summer suit, wearing a stylish fedora and carrying a cane. I recognized the man; he was a lawyer I saw from time to time in the criminal courtrooms of the City County Building. He must have also been visiting a client of his. The man normally moved slowly in court; addressed judges in a barely audible voice; was polite and charming with prosecutors, but always appeared to be fighting for his clients.

We rode the elevator in silence, looking at our shoes – me in my thoughts and the elder lawyer in his. As we reached the bottom floor, the old man’s tired eyes raised and met mine. “What a privilege it is to be able to do what we do,” he said in his typically soft tone. “Have a nice day.”

Not every day in the life of a criminal defense lawyer is nice. We have hard work to do and daily battles to fight for those whose futures and freedoms have been entrusted to us. But I am reminded from time to time of the words uttered many years ago to me by that elderly criminal defense attorney from Indianapolis.

I have devoted two decades to become excellent at my craft. My practice has always concentrated on defending those accused of committing crimes. This focus and intense desire to excel in the courtroom, in trial and in pursuit of my clients’ goals have fueled me, and have brought about countless amazing results for those clients.

As long as I choose to continue doing this work, I will always be aware of how important it is to give my very best effort on behalf of all my clients—and will always remember what a privilege it is to be able to do what I do.

EDUCATION

  • Indiana University School of Law—Indianapolis—J.D. 2000
    • 1998 Order of Barristers (Top 25% of Intramural Moot Court Competitors)
    • Awarded Effie Elizabeth Jordan Fellowship (presented annually to a graduating senior of the law school who has written the best dissertation on a constitutional subject) for a paper on Religious Victim Impact Evidence in Capital Sentencing
    • Top Grade of Section in Criminal Procedure and Administrative Law
  • United States Military Academy, West Point, New York – B.S. Engineering 1983 (commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant Field Artillery Officer in the United States Army)

PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS AND BAR ASSOCIATIONS

  • National Board of Trial Advocacy—Board Certified Criminal Trial Specialist since 2009
  • Member, National College for DUI Defense (NCDD)
  • Indiana State Bar Association (ISBA)
  • Indianapolis Bar Association (IBA)
  • Johnson County Bar Association (JCBA)
  • Admitted to practice in
    • Indiana
    • United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana

EXPERIENCE AND TRAINING

  • Criminal Defense Attorney, Kamish Law Office (2005—2007)
  • Associate, Kiefer & McGoff (2004—2005)
  • Deputy Public Defender, Marion County Public Defender Agency (2000—2004) Supplier Engineer, Harman-Motive, Inc. (1996—2000)
  • Operations Manager, Harman-Motive, Inc. (1994—1996)
  • Project Engineer, Newell (1991—1994)
  • Production Supervisor, Newell (1990—1991)
  • Field Artillery Officer, United States Army (1983—1990)
  • Graduate, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Standardized Field Sobriety Testing (SFST) Student Course (2020)
  • More than 70 hours of training in blood alcohol and blood drug analysis for DUI defense with National College for DUI Defense (NCDD)
  • Appellate advocacy includes successful oral argument to the Indiana Supreme Court (2019)
  • Faculty, Indiana Public Defender Council (IPDC) Trial Practice Institute (TPI) (2006—2015)
  • Graduate, National Criminal Defense College (NCDC) (2003)

PERSONAL INTERESTS

  • Audiobook Narration (13 titles on Audible.com and Amazon.com)
    • Most recent: The Law of Law School: The Essential Guide for First-Year Law Students for Dreamscape Media, LLC (July 14, 2020)
  • Theater (in my free time—So not much of this in the past 10 years)
  • Travel outside the U.S.

MILITARY TRAINING, AWARDS, AND EXPERIENCE

  • Ranger
  • Ranger School (Class 4-84), Fort Benning, Georgia (1983—1984)
  • Senior Parachutist
  • Jumpmaster (1986—1990)
  • Meritorious Service Medal
  • Army Commendation Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster
  • Commander, 84th United States Army Field Artillery Detachment, Grobengstingen, Germany (1988—1990)
  • Defense Language Institute (German), Presidio of Monterey, California (1987—1988)
  • Nuclear Weapons Detachment Commander’s Course, Fort Sill, Oklahoma (1987)
  • United States Army Field Artillery Officer Advanced Course, Fort Sill, Oklahoma (1987)
  • 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, North Carolina (1984—1987)
    • Battalion Fire Support Officer, 2-325 Airborne Infantry Regiment; (1985—1987)
    • Battery Fire Direction Officer, C Battery, 2-319 Airborne Field Artillery Regiment (1985)
    • Battalion Assistant S-4 Officer, 2-319 Airborne Field Artillery Regiment (1985)
    • Company Fire Support Team Chief, A Company, 2-325 Airborne Infantry Regiment (1984—1985)

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Your Best Defense Is A Call Away

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