There does seem something inherently odd about the necessity for a multi-billion dollar industry just to gather and and analyze information for lawyers, but what are you going to do? If you are dealing with financial services or chemical or other highly technical industries, how do you translate their technobabble into something peopel can actually understand?
Not exactly. I recall an anecdote about a friend who was taking leave of a judge and lightly said, “Do justice!” The judge replied in earnest, “My job is not to do justice. My job is to see that the game is played by the rules.”
And a famous attorney once remarked, “I am not a seeker of truth. I am a paid hit-man for one side in an argument.”
The jury’s job is only to resolve a narrow range of questions of fact presented to them.
The theory behind our adversarial system of justice is that all these actors, working together or at cross-purposes, will, in synergy, produce justice. Which seems to be the case, at least in the sense that nobody has invented a system that does it better.
I have a solution!
I’ll hop in my Burroughs-Libby continua skipper and head for the DC Universe, sneak into Justice League headquarters, and wait for Wonder Woman and Hawkgirl to hit the showers after a particuarly messy mission. I will have impregnated the JLA water supply with an aphrodisiac, so that when it touches the heroines bare flesh they will be consumed with lust for one another and knock boots. While that is happening I will steal Diana’s lasso of truth and bring it back to Earth. We can then bind any person wishing to file a lawsuit with it and determine whether he or she truly believes the case has merit or is simply being a dick, and moreover will have the lasso available for use on witnesses.
Does anyone see a flaw in this plan? A bigger flaw than that of the OP, I mean.
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But isn’t this system inherently unfair to the poor? Presumably, the best lawyers are the most expensive to hire, so rich people end up getting better results than poor or middle-class people.
Isn’t this a fundamental flaw with this system?
Or are we OK with a system where rich people are more likely to find justice than poor people?
ETA: And this is not just a theoretical concern. I believe statistics show that poor people are more likely than rich people to get convicted for the same crime. Or, a famous example: OJ. There is no way someone poor who killed two people in such a way, and who couldn’t afford top-notch lawyers, would be found innocent.
Perfect justice has been invented, but not implemented. I invented it, and perfect justice involves me deciding what is just. I have that as my superpower, but I lack the necessasry accompanying power, which is to make people believe my justice is indeed perfect.
How is that different from every other aspect of life?
I think it’s one thing if the rich get better gadgets, cars, homes, etc, and quite another if the system allows them to get better justice.
We are supposed to be equal before the law.
De facto, though, we are not equal, since the rich can use their money to get judicial rulings that are more in their favor than poor people can.
To expand on this a bit: Yes, the laws apply to everyone in the same way, and the law allows anyone to hire the best lawyers, so there is no explicit discrimination against the poor.
De facto though, the poor cannot hire the best lawyers, and so they are de facto not as equal in the current legal system.
One might say: No one is preventing you from making a lot of money and getting the best lawyers, so, fundamentally, there is no problem.
Consider however an extreme example: assume there was a society where the law said: “When two parties are in court against each other, the one with the most money wins”. This law is not discriminating against anyone, since anyone is free to go out and make as much money as they want. But, de facto, not everyone has the ability to make the same amount of money and it would be stupid to fully base the level of justice someone gets out of the system on the amount of money they have. And no one would ever claim that such a law is just or good in any way.
Of course, in our current system, it’s not as extreme. Money is not the sole determinant, but it does tip the scales in favor of the person with more money. And just because the poor are free to make as much money as the rich guys does not mean that the system, taken as a whole, is just.
It is not that it is “weak”. More that it is not valuable enough for an attorney to spend time on. Will an attorney take a good case that nets $5000 in damages? That $5000 may be HUGE to many people. To an attorney who would only get a percentage of that probably won’t take the case unless it is such an complete slam dunk they can expect the other side to pay up and not fight at all. Writing one letter is one thing, going to trial is a whole other.
Lawyers do pro bono work but it is nowhere near the level needed to give a good accounting of all cases that deserve a hearing.
Additionally, how far does pro bono go? Just how hard will that attorney really work for free? I am not saying they would be negligent but will they really bust their ass for free? Add in will the pro bono attorney hire expensive expert witnesses on their own dime?
Justice is not served.
EDIT: This was to address Polerius, but it applies to Whack-a-mole, too.
Do you have any evidence that this is the actual case? Sure, there’s your example of OJ and maybe a few other celeb murder cases, but those are so few and far between that I doubt they are statistically significant, PLUS those cases are decided by juries – are you implying that they are easy to trick by a good lawyer?
Furthermore, most of the “best” (and defining best as “highest paid” is a bad idea as well) lawyers work for big firms who are almost always representing corporate clients against other corporations. And how does this apply in the criminal sphere? Prosecutors aren’t known for getting the biggest paychecks, and there are a lot of great P.D.s out there.
You’re making big claims about how unfair things are, and how rich people fare better, but you are lacking evidence to support your assertions, which don’t lead to your claim. Yes, you believe that poor people are more likely to be convicted of crime X. A lot of the time, it’s because poor people who commit crime X did the crime in a way that is much easier to prosecute, not because they had worse lawyers.
To support your claim that the system is skewed in a major way, you need to show that:
- better lawyers are more expensive lawyers
- better lawyers make a huge difference in outcome (In criminal, a lot of times “good enough” is)
- poor people have worse lawyers
and - that there are a lot of “rich vs poor” cases (I’d wager most legal work involves parties of similar means or is criminal in nature, except for insurance work, and even with lobbyists and political support, the insurance industry can’t dick around too much)
I don’t deny there is probably a little bit of skew. But the idea that the industry is founded upon rich people getting away with shit because they can hire the “best” is unfounded, because Robin Hood cases are rare, and because cost is not a reliable indicator of skill, and finally because the system takes great pains to ensure that every lawyer is good enough to do a decent job.
I am also interested in hearing your idea for a better system.
P.S: I sure as hell would take a slam dunk for 25-30% of 5k. If it’s a good case, the other party knows it, and is likely to settle to save money and time.
Interesting. It looks like you’re right. Or at least not entirely wrong. I learned that CA was the only state that used unpublished opinions, but I may have just not been paying enough attention in class, and in actuality, CA is the only state whose Supreme Court issues explicitly “unpublished” opinions. In any event, my state’s supreme court does not issue them, and I know of no other state supreme court (other than CA) that does.
But I’d point out some flaws in your cites. Your first cite to the newspaper article is completely off-base: that reporter has no idea what he’s talking about. The fact that the blind guy’s decision was unreported has absolutely nothing to do with his ability to appeal. There’s a fundamental misunderstanding there of what “unreported” means. And your third cite (that gives the count at 38 states) actually, if you read it, says that that number is inflated, and the true number is 25. So no, “most” states don’t espouse the practice of unpublished opinions.
Thank you for fighting my ignorance with regard to the intermediate appeals courts of those 25 states.
However, the issue is still a tempest in a teapot. Unpublished opinions are not as sinister as you make them out to be. An unpublished opinion doesn’t mean you can’t appeal, and it doesn’t mean that the court record isn’t preserved for posterity. You can look up the transcripts for unreported opinions: they look just like reported opinions, but have the words “unreported decision” at the top. All it means is that lawyers in later, unrelated, cases can’t give your case as an example of how the judge should rule in their cases.
And this is a useful procedure. Some cases are strange, and anyone familiar with any common law system will tell you: strange cases make bad precedent. Sometimes an unusual circumstance demands that the judge find a certain way. But making that decision precedential risks sending a message that in a situation that is similar but lacks that unusual circumstance, courts should find the same way. This creates a murky web of unusual precedents, where you don’t know which circumstances are the cause of which results. And one purpose of the justice system is to provide clarity in conflicts.
Finally, I’d like to point out that this is a pretty weird complaint to register in a thread about lawyers. Sure, the people who invented this obscure procedural mechanism were lawyers, but most lawyers do nothing more than work within that system. It’s like complaining about spammers in a thread about programmers, or about crumbling roads in a thread about construction workers.
Oh, and for such a small case, why not go to small claims court, where neither side can generally have a lawyer? Problem solved. And you don’t have to split your award.
Gotta call bullshit on this one.
When people write up rules for any industry who do they consult? Experts in that industry of course (in this case lawyers) and that makes sense. The laws/system are not just pulled wholesale out of someone’s ass. They are formed by the people who they affect the most and have expertise in that area. Probably via the ABA and such in this case.
Additionally, and here really lies the rub, that majority of congresscritters at almost any level of government are lawyers. It’d be like having quarterbacks write all the rules regarding football. It’d be no surprise, if that were the case, that they’d favor themselves in some fashion.
It makes sense for people expert in a given field to play a major role in any regulations but there needs to be a balance to be sure they are not stacking the deck. I am not seeing that balance here.
See my cite in post #56.
With that info care to restate your opinion?
Sure…a slam dunk is, well, a slam dunk. If all it means is writing a letter on legal letterhead, a 10 minute call to settle with the opposing attorney and then 30 minutes to write the settlement why not?
I doubt they are anything like common though. Doubtless it happens and is every attorney’s wet dream but I’d also say this is not “justice” being meted out. This is just the mechanics. No investigation, no litigation…just dot the “i’s” and cross the “t’s” stuff. There is a place for that of course but barely tip-toes into serious recourse to the legal system.
Lawyers ruined my fantasy baseball league. Seriously. We had been in the same league since junior high school, with no major problems. After one of us recruited a law school buddy, and then another our league ended up with a handful of lawyers.
Suddenly, we had to have a written constitution, with bylaws, which inevitably lead to loophole seeking and arguing about every stupid little thing. Shit that used to be handled with common sense and a bit of arguing now had to be hashed out with commissioner rulings and analysis of the legal precedents. It stopped being any semblance of fun. All of the non lawyers vacated.
I imagine this is what happened to Congress.
You mean your cite that said that “top” prosecutors make $80k to $90k per year? And you used that cite to show that law is all about the rich beating on the poor? Puh-lease.
I will fund your trip, provided you take along a video camera.
Are you fucking kidding me?
I recommend Reading Comprehension Booster ( Grades 3 through 5 ): Home Version. Come back after you have absorbed that.
ETA: Note that those making that money were the public defenders on murder cases in Chicago and described as “atypical” for their funding at that level and they average 27 cases at any given time for that.
Learn to read.
?? What did you mean then?