A lawyer’s ethical code seem to often be at odds with the ethics of a normal person’s, and that of other professional codes (like, say, engineers). I think it can be taken as a given that the general populace has a pretty low opinion of lawyers (see: an abundance of lawyer jokes). Are these opposing moralistic frameworks the reason for this?
Disclaimer:
Personally, I think that the professional ethics of lawyers are, for the most part, necessary and good. I just want to know whether people think this is the reason lawyers are portrayed in a negative light.
I’d be curious to know where you think the Model Rules of Professional Conduct deviate from widely held lay norms. I also think the abundance of lawyer jokes, far from indicating a low opinion of lawyers (after all, blonde jokes or lady jokes don’t really suggest that blondes or ladies are despised), reveal that people tend to be interested in what lawyers do for a living (unlike, say, engineers).
I don’t know if you’re trying to take a shot at me, here, or the post itself, but I’m not an engineer. I think the current thread going on in the Pit (which you in fact have participated in!) is pretty good proof that lots of people hate lawyers. And there are engineer jokes, but none of them harp on the fact that engineers are liars or scumbags, as lawyer jokes do about lawyers.
What does this prove? Of all of the grievances I’ve heard made against lawyers, protecting client confidences has not been one of them. People are aware that this occasionally means some information that might help others will not be disclosed.
Or is this going to devolve into the old “On Big Rock Candy Mountain, these sorts of dilemmas never occur.”? In which case, I relent; chalk up a win.
If your idea of “pretty good proof” is a thread on the Straight Dope Message Board and some jokes, well then I guess it’s good thing you’re a physics student and not a lawyer.
Gack! I’d forgotten that one. What a horrible ethical obligation to be under.
Yes, I think that the rules of ethics contribute to the dislike of lawyers among the general public. However they are required in an adversarial system.
People who win cases typically think they did so because the facts and law were on their side, rather than because their lawyer was really good. People who lose cases typically think they did so because their lawyer was incompetent and the other side’s lawyer cheated and fooled the judge into not realizing that the facts and law were on their side.
In other words, the client who wins thinks it’s her own doing. The client that loses blames the lawyers. This produces a skewed view of lawyers.
No, I am not being willfully obtuse, you asserted without citation that lawyers are grossly despised. Your evidence for this claim was that you’ve heard some lawyer jokes in your day. I provided an alternative possible explanation and your response was “Some people on a message board on the internets don’t like lawyers.”
I don’t think people dance around all day singing praises to physicists and how wonderful they are. I also remember a lot of people at my college taking Flying Rocks because they didn’t like physics. And some people didn’t like Oppenheimer. So, people don’t really care for the physicists one bit, do they?
There’s something unbecoming in a person maligning the legal profession complaining about potshots being taken when it’s pointed out that his argument doesn’t carry much water.
You mean the poll that shows that nearly two-thirds of the population think lawyers have a high or average reputation for honesty and ethical behavior? So hated!!
But thank you for at least marshaling some evidence.
In my personal experience (I have had lots of experience with lawyers on the civil side, employment, commercial and real estate) and what leads to my generally poor opinion of them is that they are incredibly good at not lying, but they can mislead the hell out of people, help you hide information legally, and so on.
I’ll give an example from 20 years ago, where the companies involved are long defunct.
In employment law I saw our lawyers try to “starve out” the plaintiff by dragging out the proceedings and just bury the opposition in paperwork, and coach the heck out of us on how to avoid answering what look like fairly straightforward questions during depositions. Basically they help you find some rationale where you could say “I don’t know” to questions where in the lay mind, you do know perfectly well. I was once deposed for over 20 hours by the plaintiff’s lawyers tried to get me to reveal something damaging. I did end up revealing everything they wanted, because eventually they came up with a phrasing of the questions to which I could not answer “I don’t know” but the whole thing could have been done in 15 minutes. Basically, our lawyers, whom I was supposed to consult before anwering each question, would manage to convince me that I could answer “I don’t know” truthfully to the questions. Our company was perfectly happy to pay for 100 hours of our lawyers time to get the plaintiff to pay for 20 hours of his, because we had the deep pockets, and our only objective was to increase his costs.
Example:
Do you know why employee x was fired? “I don’t know”
Was employee x fired for doing y? “I don’t know”
Did anyone tell you that employee x was fired for doing y? “No”
<hours later>
Did manager z tell you that you would be fired if you did y? “Yes”
When was that? “xx-xx-xxxx”
Was that the day employee x was fired? “Yes”
When exactly on that day? “Immediately after I was told that employee x was fired”
Did you draw any conclusion from those two statements in succession? “Yes”
What conclusion? “That employee x was fired for doing y”
The crux of the matter was that my employer wanted us to be on notice that doing y was a cause for immediate dismissal (i.e. put us on notice immediately) but because they were anticipating a wrongful dismissal suit from employee x (or a slander lawsuit) they didn’t want to say that he was fired for doing y. Partly because they had known that he was doing y all along and had not taking any steps to stop him, but now wanted to claim that he was a single bad actor.
So basically the lawyers designed a stream of communication so that we could in one legal proceeding posit something, and in another concurrent legal proceeding posit exactly the opposite. Most people think of that as being dishonest.
My question to our lawyers was “Isn’t this bad faith?”
Their answer was something like “Don’t ever use the words ‘bad faith’ because it is a self fulfilling prophecy”
Also “We don’t like to say ‘plausible deniability’ because once you have talked about it, you have none.”
Even in my personal life, my dealings with lawyers haven’t been very edifying. When I had a property dispute with my neighbor, my lawyer was positively gleeful in declaring that we could get a very favorable result because I could afford to pay a lawyer, and my neighbor couldn’t. Most non-lawyers regard that as unfair, even though to my mind it is hard to think of an alternative arrangement that most people wold support (some kind of legal aid on a very broad basis?) Basically to the lawyer, the fact that they know how to negotiate the legal system is of course the source of their income, but to others it seems like it gives the rich another advantage in any dispute, regardless of the facts of the case.
Hey, you could have done this, since it clearly pulled on your heartstrings so:
You are rich (you could afford a lawyer). Your neighbor wasn’t (she could not afford a lawyer). In order to balance the equities, you could just let her win! Then you wouldn’t even have needed a lawyer!! Why, it’s so obvious!
So, how come you didn’t do that? All this talk about fairness to the disadvantaged couldn’t just be so much self-satisfied lip service, could it?
I am also in favor of higher taxes on people with my income, but I pay as little as possible under the law. But I can see how to many less well off people the tax code seems unfair, because I have loopholes, and end up paying less than my fair share (though thanks to AMT, not as much less as they might imagine :-(. Oddly enough most people blame the IRS and not me.
Hey, I am trying to show how many people get their impression of the legal profession. My neighbor probably found lawyers less appealing after that discussion, and I can certainly see why. Of course since this was my lawyer, I thought it was a perfectly good negotiating tactic to remind my neighbor that he couldn’t afford the legal battle. I don’t like my neighbor, I thought he was being unreasonable in the dispute in the first place, or there wouldn’t have been a lawyer involved. But I am sure after this, he likes me less, and he probably likes lawyers less too.
I think I made it clear that it is difficult to come up with a better system. The better off have advantages in life, just like the bigger players have advantages in football. Both may have “earned” some or all of the advantage by working harder, but others rarely see it the same way.
And it is the gleeful part I found distasteful. When I made a good shot in tennis (lo those many years ago) I was one of those players who didn’t find it necessary to either taunt the opponent or engage in chest bumping with my partner.
A partner at my first firm called this the “up and away” theory: Drive costs up and justice away.
This just sounds like you were told not to testify to anything speculative or anything not within your own personal knowledge. This is normal and reasonable. Many people don’t actually know things they think they know, as many things they think they know are actually based upon assumptions and supposition.
That attorney taking your deposition probably could have cut to the chase by asking if you had any reason to believe x was fired for y or if you have formed any conclusions whatsoever that x was fired for y, and then probing the bases for your conclusions.
I hope you had a reasonable and good faith belief you were in the right in your dispute and that you weren’t simply exploiting the situation just because you could.
This is part of the business I don’t like. I have had people come to me (attorney) with what appeared to be good claims or defenses but I turned them away or was asked to do less work preparing a case because they couldn’t afford to have me do even very basic things and I couldn’t afford to help them at rates they could afford.
I’ve represented clients in cases against laypersons and I have been able to use my knowledge of the legal system to win in situations where the layperson could have made a decent fight of it had they hired an attorney. However, I am 100% satisfied that in those cases, my clients were completely in the right.
Meaning a full third of the population thinks they are unethical. And look at how few people think they are highly ethical. Also, you might want to check out the other cite I gave, which says that first year law students think that lawyers are sleazy. But I guess not listening to evidence is what makes you a great lawyer, right?