NACDL

For practicing criminal defense lawyers, it is hardly news that the responsibility to provide effective representation to clients throughout the entire case is a constitutional mandate. But for some reason, many commentators viewed the recent decisions in Lafler¹and Frye² as defining some wholly new right, or as Justice Scalia said in dissent, “the Court today opens a whole new field of constitutional law: plea bargaining law.”³ It is doubtful that most practitioners would agree. For as long as plea offers have been a feature of criminal practice, responsible and competent lawyers have recognized a responsibility to tell their clients of the offer and do their best to accurately advise on the pros and cons. Indeed, professional standards have long recognized this duty.⁴ To the extent that the U.S. Supreme Court has definitively held that the constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel embraces the plea bargaining phase, there is only one real question: what took