No, I’m not looking for a new career. Neither are the other lawyers I know who share my opinion. Like the Elves in Middle Earth, we are fighting a very long losing battle, without hope for the destruction of the one ring. People must be fought for in a system that is opaque to non-members. As for the self-loathing, I separate my own personal dislike of myself from that of the profession. I have my own reasons for disliking myself that have nothing to do with my being a lawyer. My reasons for disliking lawyers, which I’ve detailed somewhat in this thread are not personally applicable to me: I won’t take a client without a case, I will make a client settle if they have no defense. I follow the rules and the law and expect others to do so. When the Cal Supreme Court hands down Elkins v. Superior Court stating that trials must have live witnesses if a party asks for it, I am pretty disgusted when within 2 years it is only cited three times, all in unpublished decisions refusing to require live testimony. I am disgusted that Benjamin Field is still practicing law and that his supervisors are not even investigated and nobody is criminally charged.
And the crack about being a closeted gay Republican is just totally below the belt. I am not a Republican. And neither gays nor closet cases needed to be insulted that way.
Mr. Parker, I think the number is about half. I’ve been specific enough for a Pit thread, please re-read it. All of these points have been addressed. There are no scientific studies, I haven’t the resources to conduct them, nobody does. That does not invalidate the opinions of people who decry the corruption in the system. There is no evidence admitting body. If you think that the legal system and lawyers are fantastic, well bully for you. You don’t have “evidence” either, nor do you have scientific studies.
Neither is my point that in a just system nobody would feel that they had “lost”. That is inevitable. Ours is a reason giving system based on precedent. Precedent is not followed and the reasons given often bullshit.
You’re missing the point. You cannot have equal legal resources for all regardless of expense in a Capitalist society. You have to choose one or the other. As Americans, we’ve decided that the benefits of Capitalism outweigh it’s nastier effects. So we endeavor to fix the problems as best we can at the edges, but the fundamental issues will always remain.
Do you know in what year criminal defendant’s were first given free lawyers? Hint: It wasn’t 1789.
This is the very crux of your argument. You point to a bunch of flaws in the system, which you can substantiate with evidence. And no one disagrees about those flaws. But then you make the leap that lawyers are all perfectly OK with those flaws. Your “seeming sense” is another way to say your unsubstantiated prejudice. Virtually no lawyer thinks the legal system is just hunky-dory. Just because there are recognized problems does not mean that there are easy solutions, nor does it mean that lawyers necessarily condone those problems.
You go on to describe a bunch of other problems with the administration of justice that are not the fault of lawyers and, in fact, are actively being challenged by many lawyers.
They are. Lawyers get sued and disbarred all the time for malpractice. I reject your contention that one case of miscarried justice means that the whole system is rotten in that respect.
That’s an ethical violation, since it’s actually up to the client and not you, and you can’t just withdraw if they don’t want to follow your plan for great justice.
So are you including yourself in the “half” of lawyers who are unethical?
The Second Stone, you admit you have nothing but anecdotal evidence of your opinion that half of all lawyers are unethical. Your reasoning is indistinguishable from the reasoning of all bigots. Some X are Y, therefore most X are Y because they are X’s.
Your argument is doubly irrational in that, not only do you extrapolate from limited anecdotes, you expressly ignore anecdotes that run in the other direction.
It’s an ethical violation if I don’t tell them that at the start and let them get another lawyer. Very few do. All who have done so have told me that they regretted it later.
I do not think that the word “bigot” means what you think that it means. It means prejudice in favor of one’s own group. I think that the word you are reaching for is bias. I freely admit I am biased against the legal system and the legal profession.
Now, you next go on to word the use anecdote as though it meant fictional story made up by Ronald Reagan. Just because one can crack wise that “the plural of anecdote is not data” does not make it so. A persons personal experiences are what they are. Written legal opinions are what they are.
You make a very good point that not every legal case is FUBAR and not every lawyer is scum. Points that I would agree with. But from there you jump to the conclusion that the system is “on balance” acceptable and that lawyers “on balance” are acceptable. Have I stated your position fairly? Because I think I have. And I don’t have a problem with your conclusions, except that I disagree with them. They are your conclusions. You are undoubtedly a much happier human being than I am. I am gratified that you like lawyers. To quote Justice Harlan: “One man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric.” I find that humankind’s application of law to be an obscenity, you find it a lyric. Good and swell. I don’t accept your view as mine.
If judges and lawyers followed the law I would have less of a problem with the system. We have a system of laws, not men. And while the law itself my be a tyranny, my problem with the law is that people do not enforce the law in good faith and do not follow precedents. And that tyranny is not even condemned by lawyers. The public actually seems to be wise to it, and I find that encouraging.
Yeah, I hate those bastards who won’t work for me for free. Wankers. Although hey, I thought we’d decided that slavery was bad. My mistake, I guess.
So, seriously; how come it’s just up to lawyers to fix this problem? Isn’t it rather a matter of us, as a society, deciding to pay for universal provision, if we’re so sure it’s necessary? How do you justify sitting on your fat arse and demanding that others be more charitable? Why aren’t you out there yourself, fighting for the masses for free?
The fact is that lawyers have set up huge organisations precisely to cater for people who can’t afford representation, or defend points of principle, all of which you write off with a wave of your patrician hand. You’re perfectly happy to hold forth on how lawyers aren’t being charitable enough to service the social rights you deem valuable (even while they put in vastly more work than you), and yet with the same breath you condemn them for not capriciously ignoring the laws you find distasteful. And you see nothing wrong with this. It’s quite breathtaking, it truly is.
Your views are despicably self-serving, comprising in essence a demand that other people fund your wishes with a blank cheque, while absolving yourself of any responsibility. You are the very worst type of communitarian; the sort that demands the moon on a stick, as long as it’s never him that is called upon to provide it.
Where did I say attorneys should work for free? I seem to recall making the case that PDs should have parity with their prosecutor counterparts and that includes, among other things, equal pay. You know who else said that? The American Bar Association.
And fulfill “my” wishes? How about fulfill the Constitution, as written. If you want to make an argument that “due process” is served while your attorney sleeps before they cart you off to prison then fine. Have at it (assuming you could possibly form anything approaching an argument instead of a rant). Every job I’ve had you get fired for sleeping on the job and none of them had at stake someone’s freedom.
As for society paying for it I did not realize that the Constitution was only enforced if we felt like paying for it or worse, enforced only for those with the means to pay for it themselves. I am dying to hear your justification on this.
Consider though that the average cost per prisoner in 2001 was $22,650/year (cite). Presumably it is even more now but going with that for now. There are 2,310,984 prisoners in the United States as of June, 2008 (cite). Assume (for the sake of argument) that better PDs with access to more resources lowered that number by just 2%. That is 46,220 fewer inmates in prison. That is a savings of $1,046,883,000/year.
Hey look! $1 billion dollars! I think that could go a fair distance to improving PD salaries and resources. Perhaps I am way off on 2% fewer convictions but sure seems reasonable to me (or add up fewer convictions with shorter sentences to combine for that effect).
But hey, why tackle the tough arguments (which you have assiduously avoided) when you can take cheap shots? It is the standard fall back of every loser like you here that has nothing of merit to say. Hell, I pointed this out to you before and all you come back with is more drivel and even less substance (didn’t think that was possible but you managed).
Summed up it is fair to characterize that as justice only for those who can afford it? You are ok with that notion?
No, I don’t know. Is it relevant whether it was 200 years ago or two years ago? It is there, as it should be, today.
I think the issues are profound. Not mere little niggles. Certainly the United States has found legal justifications for a number of awful things but thankfully many of those injustices have been corrected. This issue remains however.
The United States has more prisoners per capita than any other country in the world (cite from the Master). 1-in-100 adults in the US are in prison (cite).
Forgive me but I think this is a Big Deal[sup]tm[/sup]. I put it on par with some of the worst societal ills this country has ever faced (not the worst but up there). For all that I have been going on in here we have not even addressed a distinct racial bias still present in the judicial system or delved into the issue of plea bargains.
The answers are not necessarily easy. What answers can be found however are almost certainly going to have to come from the legal profession in one way or another. They are best positioned to assess remedies and champion changes. They are the lawyers, judges and legislators. Certainly there is some work on this yet largely many of these most egregious of issues remain, barely changed over the last few decades.
Perhaps my issue is a perceived “banality of evil” in the legal profession (don’t jump on me…not calling lawyers evil…it is a turn of phrase). Essentially, “It describes the thesis that the great evils in history generally, and the Holocaust in particular, were not executed by fanatics or sociopaths but rather by ordinary people who accepted the premises of their state and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal.” (link to quote). It is this I tend to see among the legal profession. Each one is just a guy or gal doing their job. Many are not even in criminal law and just review contracts or other mundane legal tasks. What part could they have in all of this?
Personally I think lawyers play a huge part in all this. The oft misquoted bit from Shakespeare, “'The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers” notes lawyers’ actual importance and critical role in society. That character wanted lawyers out of the way to gain power which the lawyers would stop. I agree, they are critical and as such cannot abdicate their responsibilities as just a cog in the machine, the machine is what it is.
Certainly lawyers are disbarred. Unfortunately I cannot find the article I came across that showed disbarments are rather low as a percentage. I noted the likes of Jack Thompson who managed to get up to all sorts of shenanigans before being disbarred. I noted that sleeping attorneys (has happened more than once) do not get disbarred or at least censured in some fashion. I can only wonder why the likes of Jay Bybee are not hauled before the bar (instead he gets to be a Federal Judge).
I’ll stay on the fence on this one but call me dubious about how well attorneys really police themselves in this regard.
Interesting…just saw a topic on this in Great Debates. Seems the DA can be a lot more choosy than you suspect. Even I am surprised. Maybe we both need a civics refresher course.
Jesus H. Christ, Whack-a-mole. Give your keyboard a fucking rest. (Now we know where your username comes from.)
Your entire last post was “Dude, I’m so right, like all you have to do is google”. And you are still such a fucking moron that you haven’t yet made any sort of connection between “Budgets need to be adjusted” and “Lawyers are all scumbags who should be reviled and likely shot”.
You’ve posted about HALF the posts on this page alone. Maybe if you post the same drivel 10 or 12 more times a hole in the spacetime continuum will open up and magically fix the justice system and make us think you’re not a crank.
It is not enough to do a little pro bono on the side and say we tried. First of all, that puts the interests of the poor and underrepresented at the mercy and generosity of lawyers. A group that has a lip service obligation to do some pro bono work, but not all that is necessary, half that is necessary or a zillionth that is necessary. Yes it is better than nothing, but if you are one of the teeming millions that does not have free legal service from a patron lawyer, it does little good. That being said, the lack of free lawyers rates a next to nothing on my complaints about lawyers. 'Course that may be because I don’t personally find any difficulties with that.
Lawyers are not responsible for the drug war (which as an aside I think ending would do a world of good on several fronts not least regarding a lot of this).
Like it or not though lawyers DO have to prosecute and defend the people caught in the drug war. They still have rights.