One of the first lessons I learned as a lawyer is that no one wants to have a legal problem. Hiring a lawyer, like going to the doctor, is born of necessity. Just as patients do not seek out interesting medical illnesses, clients do not celebrate fascinating legal problems.

When it comes to voting and election cases, too many lawyers and political observers forget this. The object is to enable voters to cast ballots under a fair set of rules and have those ballots counted. Lawyers may celebrate or pick apart the legal reasoning and the procedural developments, but the clients want to be able to vote.

I reflected on this as I read the analysis of a case my law firm won this week in Indiana. Last year, the state legislature removed college IDs from the accepted list of voter identification. On Tuesday, a federal judge agreed that our client was likely to prevail on the merits in his challenge to the law, and blocked it.

What happened next depends on where you stand.

Legal analysts point out that Indiana immediately appealed the ruling to the conservative 7th Circuit Court of Appeals. In their view, our victory remains incomplete and very much in doubt.

Yet, from the standpoint of our client — and many like him — it looks very different. On Wednesday morning, he voted using his college ID.

No matter what happens to the case from here, from his perspective, the case was a success. As a result of an Indiana law, he faced disenfranchisement. Because of our lawsuit, he instead cast his ballot.

The next time someone tries to sell you on a case as a victory or defeat, tell them you don't want to know what a law professor thinks — you want to know whether the client believes they prevailed.

That is how I judge my court wins and losses. And on that score, Indiana was a complete success.

What worried me most this week

Thursday brought bad news from North Carolina. The state’s Republican-controlled board of elections announced it is sharing its unredacted voter data with the Trump administration.

North Carolina claims it will use the Department of Homeland Security’s SAVE database to check voter rolls. The immigration database is decades old, and notoriously inaccurate. It has been known to erroneously flag U.S. citizens as noncitizens. 

This is both a safety concern and a voter suppression tool. The Trump administration has proven to be careless when it comes to checking for immigration status. The use of this system in North Carolina will surely put U.S. citizens in harm's way. 

It will also...