Criminal defense and marathon running require the same kind of preparation. A runner who completes 42 kilometers learns something about planning, patience, awareness of personal limits, and resilience. A criminal defense lawyer handling a serious case needs precisely the same set of virtues — voluntarism, rhetoric, and haste don’t carry you through.
Last Sunday, I completed my sixth marathon. The Paraná International Marathon, in southern Brazil, starts on the climb up to the Guaratuba Bridge — and it was while crossing that bridge, with the entire race still ahead of me, that I returned to thinking about the connection between these two activities. I started running marathons in 2020. I’ve always been an anxious person, in a hurry to resolve everything. Long-distance running forced me to accept a different logic: certain accomplishments cannot be improvised.
Criminal defense and marathon running require planning
You don’t complete a marathon by waking up one day and deciding to run. Even an experienced runner needs months of specific preparation — long runs for endurance, short runs for speed, strength training, adjusted nutrition, programmed rest, expectation management. Each component has a function; remove any one of them and the result suffers.
Criminal defense works the same way. Before any filing, the lawyer must understand where the case can realistically go. In some proceedings, the realistic goal is to obtain dismissal of the police inquiry. In others, preliminary rejection of the indictment. In still others, the lawyer must prepare for a long evidentiary phase, examine witnesses, organize documents, and build a consistent factual narrative aimed at acquittal in the trial court.
There are also cases where the decisive legal argument will only be heard at the Superior Court of Justice (STJ) or the Federal Supreme Court (STF). In those cases, the work begins much earlier. The constitutional violation, the federal-law issue, and the points relevant to a future special appeal or extraordinary appeal must be set up from the first defensive filing. A defense thesis is not born in the appellate brief. It is born in the very first petition.
Criminal defense cannot be improvised
Some races tolerate short preparation. A 5K can be trained for in a few weeks. The marathon is something else. It isn’t just a longer distance — it requires a change of routine.
Criminal practice contains both kinds of demand. There are urgent matters that resolve in a few days — a serious internal investigation handled correctly, a careful response to a regulatory inquiry, the right posture during an unannounced visit by authorities. These situations demand agility. But the harder cases, and the career as a whole, are not built that way. Criminal defense is endurance work. It depends on reputation, predictability, solid professional relationships, and a record of consistency.
No case should be treated as if it were the last. Nor should the client be sold the idea of victory at any cost. The lawyer’s duty is to do everything technically within reach to obtain the best possible result — courage tempered by prudence, combativeness tempered by accurate reading of the terrain.
Over a career, we encounter the same judges, prosecutors, investigators, court staff, fellow lawyers, and clients. Everyone runs, in some way, through the same 42 kilometers of professional life. Credibility cannot be sacrificed for a momentary win or a reckless promise.
Knowing the right pace is also strategy
During Sunday’s race, I thought about something concrete. A week earlier, at the London Marathon, Sabastian Sawe became the first runner to complete an official marathon under two hours, with a time of 1:59:30. No matter how much I train, I will never come close to that. If one day I cross the finish line under four hours, I will be very satisfied — for me, that is an excellent result.
The legal profession requires the same honesty about one’s own limits. Knowing what you do well, where you still need to improve, and when you should bring in someone more experienced in a particular area. There is always someone more technical, faster, more specialized in a specific domain. Recognizing that increases the chances of a good result for the client.
The goal isn’t to “be the best” in the abstract. It is to deliver, in each case, the best possible work within the actual conditions — with intellectual honesty and real commitment to the client.
Not every victory looks the same
In one marathon, finishing the race is the win. In another, improving your time by a few minutes. In another, finishing without injury is enough. The result is measured against the preparation, the course, the weather, the body, and the context.
In criminal defense, the same applies. In some cases, acquittal is a realistic goal. In others, the best possible outcome is avoiding pretrial detention, securing a non-custodial sentence, reducing financial exposure, preserving the company, limiting reputational damage, or preventing a poorly conducted investigation from destroying a person’s life before any conviction.
This must be told to the client clearly. The achievable result is not always the imagined result. But often, the technically achievable outcome is decisive for the person’s life. For someone facing a real risk of imprisonment, not being imprisoned can be an enormous victory.
Knowing how to lose is part of the work
There are races where you break down. A cramp at kilometer 30, a knee that locks, a stomach that won’t settle. In some of them, you can still finish — slower, in pain, but crossing the line. In others, dropping out is the right call: avoid worse injury, recover, and train for the next race. Both decisions are legitimate. Anyone who runs marathons seriously has experienced both.
Criminal defense has equivalent moments. There are cases that are lost. Evidence that won’t hold up, hearings where a witness collapses, judicial decisions that go against you even when the technical work was sound. Anyone who has practiced long enough has been there.
What separates good practitioners is not avoiding these situations — it is knowing how to handle them. Lost cases require honest reading of what failed, strategic adjustment for the next ones, and resumption of the work. Discouragement does not change the outcome and does not help the next client. The career continues, and the next clients need their lawyer to continue too.
The long term as a method
The marathon teaches you to make hard choices. Sleep better. Eat better. Train when you don’t feel like it. Reduce excess. Accept bad training days. Restart after injuries. Sit through weeks where progress isn’t visible.
Criminal defense demands the same disposition. There are cases that last years. Theses that mature slowly. Unfair decisions that must be confronted without losing clarity. Moments when the defense must insist, preserve the issue for appeal, file motions, rebuild the strategy, and continue.
Crossing the finish line after 42 kilometers made me think that the marathon hasn’t only taught me to run. It taught me to wait better, to plan better, and to accept that certain important things don’t happen at the speed of anxiety.
Perhaps that has also helped me in criminal defense. Defending someone in a criminal proceeding requires technique, but it also requires endurance. It requires knowing when to push, when to conserve energy, when to insist, when to recalculate the route, and when to explain to the client that the possible victory is different from the imagined one.
The marathon made me less hurried. Probably because of that, it also made me a better lawyer.
Guilherme Brenner Lucchesi is a criminal defense attorney, holds a doctorate in Law from UFPR, an LL.M. from Cornell Law School, and is a professor of Criminal Procedure at the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR) and founding partner of Lucchesi Advocacia.
