[P_I_Staker]

Lawyers have a responsibility to act ethically. You aren't necessarily going to get into trouble for what they do, if you're only following their instructions. This is shaky legal ground and a rarely successful defense that came up with all the Tump stuff. Here it seems it might be appropriate though.

"Advice of counsel defense", a Quote from Jens David Ohlin, a vice dean at Cornell Law School (taken from business insider article)

> The advice-of-counsel defense "doesn't apply if both the lawyer and the client are on the same page that what they are doing is illegal in some way," Ohlin said. "According to Cohen, both he and Trump understood that they were paying hush money to influence an election, and then covered it up to hide the illegality."

However, in this case, did both parties know that something illegal was going on? That's more of a stretch here. If I met with a lawyer and said "lets illegally commit extortion", obviously that's illegal. If my attorney just does it, as a part of an ongoing legal dispute, it's far less clear (lots of legal disputes can seem like extortion; eg. settle with us now or you'll have to pay even more to defend, is a standard strategy). That lack of clarity could be plenty of motivation to dissuade prosecutors from bringing charges; especially if they're on good terms with the party and happily using them in an ongoing investigation.

[gamblor956]

Blackmail communicated through a lawyer is still blackmail, and moreover makes a lawyer a party to blackmail.

AMI's lawyers are on very shaky ground here and there's a realistic chance they end this decade disbarred.