When wealthy and powerful people make such bad decisions, it’s tempting to assume they must have gotten terrible legal advice. But that’s rarely true. Yes, for most people, there is a crisis of good lawyering in America: Quality legal advice is too expensive. Our public defenders are overworked and underfunded. Few Americans can afford to litigate a civil dispute at all, let alone do so aggressively with elite lawyers. But when the rich and powerful — the self-styled “masters of the universe” — make legally disastrous decisions, it’s usually because they’ve either ignored their attorneys or self-indulgently chosen the wrong lawyers for the job…

Prosecutors and federal agents are extremely adept at exploiting human foibles. Mueller knows from long experience that powerful people think they can talk their way out of trouble and resent lawyers telling them they can’t. He also knows that powerful people tend to favor action. Often, my first advice to a client is simply “Stop doing things” — stop trying to use your influence and connections and persuasiveness and industry experience to solve the problem of being the subject of a criminal investigation. Patience and watchfulness are usually the best strategy. But people who clawed their way to the top by dynamism are no good at sitting still.