# Arrogant Attorney Asshats **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 27, 2009, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrogant-attorney-asshats/494476 "2009-04-27T08:11:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2009, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrogant-attorney-asshats/494476/21 "2009-04-27T16:54:31Z")
People who want something for nothing have no cause to complain when the something turns out to be nothing. I find it amusing that the person who seems to be arguing that law school isn’t necessary for her is calling other people arrogant. ---
**Author:** ![Sarahfeena](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarahfeena/32/519_2.png) [@Sarahfeena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarahfeena)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2009, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrogant-attorney-asshats/494476/22 "2009-04-27T16:54:52Z")
I’m not a lawyer, but my dad is. If he is any indication, it seems to me that lawyers simply don’t think about anything in terms of straight-forward “information.” To a lawyer, information is _always_ looked at through the lens of “how is this information going to be used,” and there isn’t anything black & white. If you want a literal definition of a legal term, that is a piece of information you might be able to get from a lawyer. Anything beyond that is going to be partly about the information and partly about their interpretation of the information. And once they get into interpretation, they want to apply it to something, because that affects the interpretation. Once they apply it to your situation, that’s advice. To a lawyer, there IS no information without advice, so your accusation of lying to me indicates a lack of thinking like a lawyer on your part. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2009, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrogant-attorney-asshats/494476/23 "2009-04-27T16:56:34Z")
> [@Dead\_Badger](#): > > Fortunately, Prolog will also be very handy when you’re up the creek, and discover a farmer, pig, wolf and goat who want to work out how to get to the other bank without the wolf eating the goat. > > As often happens. I did a bit better than that with Prolog - I wrote a program to solve [Einstein’s Riddle](http://www.manbottle.com/trivia/einstein_s_riddle), so-called. And it ran in something under a minute and a half on a mid-1980s IBM PC, which I didn’t think too shabby, at that. The great thing was that in Prolog you really only need to write down the problem in the language and you’ve coded the solution. 🆒 Re: wooden bomb shelters, I liked the WW2 story where the Germans built a wooden town complete with wooden factories and wooden vehicles as a decoy for the Allies to waste bombs on. Apparently when it was finished the RAF sent _one_ Mosquito over to drop a wooden bomb on it. 😃 The OP? I got nothin’. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2009, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrogant-attorney-asshats/494476/24 "2009-04-27T16:58:19Z")
> [@jsgoddess](#): > > People who want something for nothing have no cause to complain when the something turns out to be nothing. Sig, please? 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2009, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrogant-attorney-asshats/494476/25 "2009-04-27T17:02:01Z")
> [@Malacandra](#): > > Re: wooden bomb shelters, I liked the WW2 story where the Germans built a wooden town complete with wooden factories and wooden vehicles as a decoy for the Allies to waste bombs on. Apparently when it was finished the RAF sent _one_ Mosquito over to drop a wooden bomb on it. 😃 The Mosquito was made out of wood, too. [Really.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Mosquito#Design_and_development) ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2009, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrogant-attorney-asshats/494476/26 "2009-04-27T17:04:58Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > The Mosquito was made out of wood, too. > > [Really.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Mosquito#Design_and_development) I’m a British WW2 warplanes buff. Estimate the odds that I did not know this. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2009, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrogant-attorney-asshats/494476/27 "2009-04-27T17:06:31Z")
> [@Dead\_Badger](#): > > Well, when someone is as up-front as you’ve been about how they’re representing themselves, it becomes very difficult to distinguish information from advice. Everyone you’re pursuing for “just the facts” will be very aware of what you’re doing, and that you will be processing said facts through an incomplete knowledge and limited experience of the law. This in turn means that there is huge scope for misinterpretation of bald, simple statements. You might say that’s your problem, but I don’t think it’s that easy to insist people disavow responsibility for their words. As I said in the OP… you have a right to say no, and while I don’t like it, I wouldn’t pit you for it. The pitting is for the bullshit. I have and do get lawyers to give me information (and to see that I actually do understand what I’m doing, to even put _their_ name on _my_ work) but they have not been specialists with tremendous experience to draw the information from. Of course the bizarro nature of much of what I’ve been dealing with has meant that even the really smart, experienced lawyers end up scratching their heads saying “What the hell?” (And not at **me** ) I do have one advisor, by far the best qualified and smartest of the lot, on a very small retainer, but I prefer to reserve that for the critical moments when I HAVE to have someone whom I trust as highly skilled to review what I’m doing or thinking of doing. But I can’t even decide to DO a thing until I have enough information about it. Part of what I’m trying to do is a make a decision about a particular thing, and I will be hiring a lawyer to accomplish it, but I can’t make that decision OR decide on a lawyer without some information. I know that most people go to the lawyer wanting nothing more than to have that lawyer step in and say “there, there, don’t worry about it, I’ll guide you…” but I’m in no position to do that because doing that costs too much AND I wouldn’t do that without having a clear idea of how genuinely skilled the lawyer in question might be. Which I have a better shot at assessing if they will have a clear, informative conversation with me. Just trusting that a lawyer, any lawyer, automatically knows and will always know better than any non-lawyer is completely untrue and a foolish thing to believe. And today it just happens to be lawyer bullshit. I always hate bullshit. Because bullshit really doesn’t help anything, no matter how often people repeat the bullshit that bullshit does help. Far more problems are created by people not being forthright than from people being forthright. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2009, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrogant-attorney-asshats/494476/28 "2009-04-27T17:10:25Z")
Which of the following is usually associated with arrogance? 1. Abundance of caution 2. Statements like “I’m smarter than you so you have nothing to offer me anyway.” ---
**Author:** ![Linty\_Fresh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Linty\_Fresh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Linty_Fresh)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2009, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrogant-attorney-asshats/494476/29 "2009-04-27T17:14:29Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > And today it just happens to be lawyer bullshit. I always hate bullshit. Because bullshit really doesn’t help anything, no matter how often people repeat the bullshit that bullshit does help. Far more problems are created by people not being forthright than from people being forthright. Funny. Over the last 30 years or so, life has taught me pretty much the exact opposite of this. And anyway, that “bullshit” you’re going on and on about (kind of incoherently, I might add. I had to read that post twice before I realized what was going on. At least I think I realized it. ) is the result of the lawyer’s long, hard experience of dealing with situations like yours and people like you who never saw the inside of a law school but think they know soooo much more than anyone else. Do you want to have a hope in hell of getting what you want out of this, **Stoid**? If so, you’d better grow up. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2009, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrogant-attorney-asshats/494476/30 "2009-04-27T17:19:57Z")
I always ask my doctor how many pills I’d need to take for a lethal dose, and he always gives me the runaround. Just give me a NUMBER, doc— all I want is the INFORMATION. It’s none of your business how I plan to use that information. I’m much more brilliant than he is anyway, and I have a much nicer stethoscope and more illegible handwriting. If I weren’t so busy plotting my glorious murder-suicide, I’d just look up the LD50 myself, but genius the likes of mine can’t be squandered on such trivialities. ---
**Author:** ![Jodi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7feea3/32.png) [@Jodi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jodi)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2009, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrogant-attorney-asshats/494476/31 "2009-04-27T17:24:18Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > I do have one advisor, by far the best qualified and smartest of the lot, on a very small retainer, but I prefer to reserve that for the critical moments when I HAVE to have someone whom I trust as highly skilled to review what I’m doing or thinking of doing. But I can’t even decide to DO a thing until I have enough information about it. You have a lawyer you can turn to whom you trust as highly skilled, but you “prefer to reserve that for the critical moments” when you HAVE to have someone review what you’re thinking of doing. Gosh, maybe this is one of those moments! :rolleyes: ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2009, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrogant-attorney-asshats/494476/32 "2009-04-27T17:30:07Z")
> [@Linty\_Fresh](#): > > **Stoid** , I say this as a friend: > It doesn’t matter how smart you are, how mature you are, or how right you are. The law isn’t something you pick up as a hobby to help you get ahead while learning something in the meantime. It’s a career, one requiring years of training and a fucktastically difficult test just to practice it. > > You might make some progress. You might be encouraged by someone’s praise about how well you’re doing, but you are not a lawyer, and you don’t know how lawyers do what they do, and you’re going to wind up getting hurt. Law isn’t a scam. It’s just a field you happen not to know anything about. A bunch of lawyers who have nothing to gain financially by _ADVISING_ you to get a qualified lawyer have said as much. It’s time to face facts, Christopher. > > Get a lawyer. Seriously, just . . . get a lawyer, OK? I appreciate your concern, truly, you express it very sincerely and I take it as it’s meant. But here’s the fun part: it isn’t possible for it to get any worse than it is at this point. Seriously. Barring my finally turning to the judge in frustration and saying something… ill-advised… and finding myself thrown in jail for contempt, she’s pretty much done everything she can possibly do, she’s all outta ammo. I ended up in this situation because of the lawyer I had, who is actually an extremely experienced, top-drawer guy (old family friend). But…he was what nearly all the lawyers I’ve ever encountered are: jaw-droppingly arrogant. Which, at the time, both thrilled and worried me. It thrilled when I was scared shitless because I believed in him. It worried me when I saw to what degree it allowed him to assume that, in spite of my pleading with him that the other side was not going to play the game the way he believed they would, he knew how it would go down in court. And, now that I have learned so much, I know why he believed that, and ended up gobsmacked. It’s because 99.99% of the time, it would have gone the way he anticipated. It pretty much always does, and the law itself requires that it does. But he didn’t anticipate our judge. I’d love to have a really great lawyer, that would be an enormous relief. But since I can’t afford a really great lawyer, I’ve got me. And like I said, at this point it can’t get worse, so there’s no harm in trying. ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2009, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrogant-attorney-asshats/494476/33 "2009-04-27T17:31:19Z")
> [@Jodi](#): > > You have a lawyer you can turn to whom you trust as highly skilled, but you “prefer to reserve that for the critical moments” when you HAVE to have someone review what you’re thinking of doing. > > Gosh, maybe this is one of those moments! > > :rolleyes: I haven’t made a decision about what I’m going to do yet, remember? Need more information… ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2009, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrogant-attorney-asshats/494476/34 "2009-04-27T17:40:37Z")
> [@Linty\_Fresh](#): > > Funny. Over the last 30 years or so, life has taught me pretty much the exact opposite of this. Seriously? Your experience is that honesty blows and lying rocks? Seriously? As I sit here in astonishment, ready to blow you off, I had the most alarming realization. The Plaintiff and (much, much, much more so, more intensely, deliberately and flagrantly) his attorney lied constantly, about everything. Even about stupid things. It was almost like a kind of Tourette’s, it was so relentless. I told 100% of the truth, 100% of the time. With documentary backup. Wow. You may have a point. People lie because it works. How depressing. ---
**Author:** ![ivn1188](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e480ec/32.png) [@ivn1188](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivn1188)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2009, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrogant-attorney-asshats/494476/35 "2009-04-27T17:42:29Z")
In other words, she wants advice from a lawyer about which lawyer is a better lawyer than the one she is asking so that she can then not hire the first lawyer in favor of not hiring the better lawyer so that she can lose her own case some more, because as is abundantly clear, the fact that her case can not actually get any worse doesn’t actually reflect upon **Stoid** ’s qualifications to accurately evaluate a given person’s legal skills, because it’s _really_ all about the judge doing things all wrong (as anyone with a brain would know, because **Stoid** is a very good judge of legal competency). Clear? ---
**Author:** ![Jodi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7feea3/32.png) [@Jodi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jodi)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2009, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrogant-attorney-asshats/494476/36 "2009-04-27T17:42:34Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > I haven’t made a decision about what I’m going to do yet, remember? Need more information… But you do know what you’re “thinking about doing,” correct? If there only was someone you could ask for advice . . . . whoops! I mean information. Perhaps a source will occur to you someday. ---
**Author:** ![Dead\_Badger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/848f3c/32.png) [@Dead\_Badger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dead_Badger)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2009, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrogant-attorney-asshats/494476/37 "2009-04-27T17:47:36Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > Just trusting that a lawyer, any lawyer, automatically knows and will always know better than any non-lawyer is completely untrue and a foolish thing to believe. And I didn’t say this. I just think that when you’ve got a group of people whose professional experience comprises years and years of processing laws through contextual filters, it’s asking rather a lot for you to a) present them with a whole bunch of context, b) describe one particular and (you have to admit) rather unusual approach, and then c) demand that they act more or less completely contrary to their long-established professional method and pronounce on points of (things you think to be) pure fact without any reference to the situation. I don’t think there is this clear dividing line between information and advice that you’re making out, even in far less equivocal subjects like mine, and (without seeing some example) I don’t readily believe that people are bullshitting you because they secretly don’t want to help. If they didn’t want to help, they’d just not reply to your posts (or whatever the equivalent is, wherever you’re asking this). As **Boyo Jim** said, it’s also hard to believe that the information you’re after can be as purely factual as you maintain; if this were the case, you could surely look it up. As soon as you venture into the world of interpretation, any answer is inevitably going to be specific to your case, and is going to therefore be advice. Basically, without examples it’s hard to see that what you describe as “bullshit” isn’t a completely honest interpretation on their part that what you’re asking for is, in fact, advice. This may be irritating to you, but it’s hardly grounds for abuse. ---
**Author:** ![Jodi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7feea3/32.png) [@Jodi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jodi)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2009, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrogant-attorney-asshats/494476/38 "2009-04-27T17:49:27Z")
> [@Stoid](#): > > People lie because it works. How depressing. There’s lying and then there’s lying. People lie about minor things – like whether they “can’t” help a near-stranger trying to mooch professional services from them for free, or whether they in reality _won’t_ – because it greases the skids of human interaction. “Does this dress make me look fat?” “Heck no!” “Can you go to the creationism lecture on Friday?” “No, I can’t, sorry.” (Two lies there.) “Do you like turnip casserole? This is homemade.” " . . . Yes . . . " That doesn’t make them “liars” who are pathologically dishonest in every aspect of their lives, and can’t distinguish between social white lies and lying about serious matters in formal proceedings. Almost everyone does the former. Almost nobody does the latter. You are astonished that “people lie” and are apparently unable to acknowledge the not-very-subtle distinction between white lies and perjury. That does point to a very serious social disability, but I’m afraid it’s yours, not the lawyers. ---
**Author:** ![Stoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stoid/32/272_2.png) [@Stoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stoid)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2009, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrogant-attorney-asshats/494476/39 "2009-04-27T17:51:30Z")
> [@Jodi](#): > > But you do know what you’re “thinking about doing,” correct? If there only was someone you could ask for advice . . . . whoops! I mean information. > > Perhaps a source will occur to you someday. Not his area. ---
**Author:** ![Elysian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c77e96/32.png) [@Elysian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elysian)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2009, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrogant-attorney-asshats/494476/40 "2009-04-27T17:56:49Z")
> [@ivn1188](#): > > In other words, she wants advice from a lawyer about which lawyer is a better lawyer than the one she is asking so that she can then not hire the first lawyer in favor of not hiring the better lawyer so that she can lose her own case some more, because as is abundantly clear, the fact that her case can not actually get any worse doesn’t actually reflect upon **Stoid** ’s qualifications to accurately evaluate a given person’s legal skills, because it’s _really_ all about the judge doing things all wrong (as anyone with a brain would know, because **Stoid** is a very good judge of legal competency). > > Clear? No! ☹ Still not clear. More information please? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrogant-attorney-asshats/494476.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/arrogant-attorney-asshats/494476.md?page=3)