Emil Pacelli didn’t get into this field chasing a corner office or a shiny desk nameplate. When he decided to learn the craft of criminal defense, he didn’t run to the firms with marble floors and billing targets.
He went to the place most people avoid: the Public Defender’s Office. Just like someone else we know... Joshua Mulligan
That’s where he learned the part of this work that no textbook teaches—looking someone in the eye after the world has written them off and saying, “I hear you. Your story matters.”
In those rooms, where people come in chained at the wrists, Emil found his calling.
And he brings that calling with him every day to The Mulligan Defense.
With more than three years of hands-on experience in criminal defense, Emil has developed a skill set built for cases where the stakes are highest:
These credentials form the skeleton. The heart of his work—the part you can’t teach—is how he reads people, reads patterns, and reads between the lines.
It's not everyday that you run into someone within the criminal legal profession that has cut their teeth on some truly lifechaning caseworkl
On paper, the story looked simple: a violent client, a clear victim, a clean police report.
Emil wasn’t buying it.
Disc by disc, hour by hour, Emil went through the digital discovery the way a jeweler inspects a diamond—close, slow, and with zero assumptions.
Buried in the noise, he uncovered the truth:
It wasn’t attempted murder. It was self-defense.
He drafted a comprehensive findings report that laid out the real story with such clarity that the prosecution’s case didn’t wobble—it collapsed. The prosecution backed down because they didn't have a leg to stand on.
A stray line to most. Not to Emil.
He pulled that thread. And pulled, and pulled , and he pulled some more. His follow-up work uncovered that the witness had previously made a false accusation. That single discovery shifted the entire trajectory of the case.
This is Emil’s gift: he hears the sentence that doesn’t fit, the detail that smells wrong, the truth hiding in the paperwork.
When cases get messy—and they always do—Emil is the one who rebuilds order from the wreckage.
Clients know him as the calm in the storm.
Colleagues know him as the one who keeps the train on the tracks.
He never forgets there’s a person on the other end of every file.
Not a defendant.
A human being with a family, a future, and a story worth telling.
Emil isn’t aiming for a career built on power or prestige.
His long-term goal: become an attorney who stands with the people everyone else pushes aside.
He wants to be the lawyer who walks into court not as part of the machinery but as its challenger—carrying the stories of the broken, the damned, and the discarded, and demanding they be heard.
It’s not ambition. It’s purpose. And that is why he is an integral part of The Mulligan Defense.
He reminds the firm—and the system—that every file is a life, every detail is a chance, and every case deserves someone who cares enough to find what others miss.