Dear Stoid:
Don’t let your detractors get you down; won’t it knock them on their asses when you discover the Nash equilibrium.
Fondest regards,
Kimmy Gibbler
True, but then it’s probably not too much extra work to stick some heuristics in your standard “step-check-recurse” loop; in fact I suspect the accessibility heuristics would be pretty easy to write in Prolog. But yeah, the farmer puzzle is so small you don’t need to bother with anything like that. I think we added a cabbage to make it slightly more interesting (Sentences You Don’t Often Hear #472), but it’s still pretty tiny. I may well change it to your wives version for next year. Quite tempted to add the Knight’s Tour too, just to really give 'em the willies. 
In the IMHO thread you said “75% of librarians at the LA Law Library know me by first name. I’ve lived there and at UCLA for most of the past year”. Obviously this has been a major undertaking. It seems that your main reason for representing yourself is that lawyers want to charge a lot of money to do it, which I can certainly believe.
How many hours have you spent on this legal research? How many more do you expect to spend on it? How much did the lawyers you contacted estimate it would cost to handle your appeal? Wouldn’t it have been more effective to have worked an extra job with that research time and used the money to pay a lawyer? That way, if they fuck up, you can sue them, since they are acknowledged to be experts at this. If you lose, you can’t sue yourself.
For the record, I am not a lawyer or in any way involved in the legal profession.
Ummm. No.
Or rather, yes: if I had asked those questions, then I would be asking advice. You are asking those questions. Not me. I didn’t ask them in this thread, and I don’t ask them in real life.
For many reasons, top of the list being I do not want his/her advice. Being “advised” to move in any direction I don’t have sufficient information about to evaluate isn’t helpful.
You have erected a StrawStoid with whom to argue. Should you want to continue to discuss this with the actual Stoid, you will need to refer to what the actual Stoid actually said.
The fact that I am seeking information (i.e., case law, statutes, his own observation) from Joe Lawyer so that I can more effectively find even more information so that I can improve my understanding so that I can feel more secure about my legal decisions…does not mean that I am asking Joe Lawyer to predict the outcome of my decisions or advise me on what decisions to make.
If that distinction continues to escape you, perhaps removing it from the legal realm altogether will help make it clearer:
I am facing a decision about where to go on vacation. There are a large number of factors that will affect my final decision, such as heat, humidity, cost, what type of travel is required, how long that travel will take, possible diseases, language spoken, what kind of food is available, what entertainment, potential local dangers… on and on.
I am having a hard time getting any information about local diseases.
I turn to an airline pilot, who travels to many parts of the world, including the four destinations I’m considering. So I ask him the following questions:
Do you know if any of these locations has a lot of parasitic diseases that need to be avoided? Have you ever gotten sick yourself or known of anyone getting sick? (If the answer is yes) do you happen to know what the diseases are called, so I can find out more information about them?
So which of the following have I just done:
A. Asked the pilot for information about one of the factors involved in my final decision about where I will vacation, or
B. Asked him to advise me about where i should go on vacation?
C. Asked him to predict whether I will come down with a particular disease?
If your answer is B or C or both, then you have made it clear that we have an irreconcilable difference in our understanding of language and communication that makes further discussion or debate completely pointless.
There is scads of assumption going on all over the place, you know, both in this thread and in the real world. I find it very hard to believe that you really believe I said all those "my"s… you knew you were assuming that’s what I really meant. That’s what lawyers do, too. And while, again, everyone has a right to limit themselves to what they are comfortable with, for whatever reason it makes them comfortable, i.e., a lawyer declining to say anything for fear that I will treat it as something it isn’t, there is no validity in asserting that you know that my clear expression actually IS something other than it appears to be.
I’m curious about this too.
Or a similar example: Assume someone asks a physicist “Which element has more electrons in each atom, Helium or Hydrogen?”
If the physicist knows that the guy is planning on building a bomb, and if the physicist (a) thinks that is a stupid idea, and (b) doesn’t want to provide any aid towards this stupid goal, then he can simply refuse to answer the question.
But if the physicist says “I don’t want to give you advice on how to build a bomb” that would be a bit disingenuous and (I think) is what is annoying Stoid.
First of all, “removing this from the legal realm” makes it essentially meaningless, as previous posters have made it abundantly clear that the problems with what you are asking exist particularly and uniquely in the legal realm.
Second, I think choice B is a legitimate answer here. You didn’t say “Tell me where to go on vacation,” but it’s clear that you are going to use the answer you get in order to decide where to go on vacation. The information you get will influence your decision. If we return to the legal realm, where you are asking a lawyer for information that will influence your decision-making process regarding your case, then it’s pretty obvious that the lawyer is providing legal advice to you, as has been very clearly explained up-thread.
Third, the over-use of underlining, bold, italics, and ferchrissakes red highlighting, does not make you seem like a non-crazy person. I’m just sayin’.
Check the commentary from the lawyers in the second half of the last page about their very particular rules that they live and practice by, and the chance of investigations or disbarment if they screw up or if someone accuses them of this. Their “information” turns into something much more than a chat if it sounds like the case is reality, which Stoid has admitted to, so therefore a lawyer who “merely” provided a little “information” could get in a whole lot of trouble (or at least a major headache and a threat to his/her career) if they gave this advice and later on Stoid decides they sucked/loses the lawsuit/didn’t provide important details that would have affected said advice and problems occur/etc.
Physicists don’t have a similar set of laws. Doctors may get snagged by a malpractice lawsuit, potentially, if they run into a similar situation.
Well, that should make it even harder for the potential client to engage him.
Of course, lawyers are all about ritual codes.
If the physicist knows that the guy is planning on building a bomb, and if the physicist (a) thinks that is a stupid idea, and (b) doesn’t want to provide any aid towards this stupid goal, why would you call it disingenuous for her to say “I don’t want to give you advice on how to build a bomb.”?
I ask this because “disingenuous” is synonymous with “insincere” and whatever it is that the physicist is doing, she is certainly neither lying about her surmise nor about her willingness to give succor to that endeavor.
Nevertheless, I think if you substitute “appearing at oral argument with this batshit case theory that no one other than the advocate herself understands, despite her having had months to refine it and believing that reading a chapter or two in a hornbook is going to suffice while being questioned by the panel and demonizing the court below and opposing counsel while you’re at it” for “building a bomb” in your above paragraph, you will have a pretty good understanding of how, I think univocally, the attorneys on this board have reacted to the OP’s plan.
Ok, the part you seem to be having trouble with here is that you are hung up on the idea that advice is just “predicting your case” or “advising you on what decisions you should make”.
Except that researching different lines of inquiry (or not researching some lines of inquiry) are decisions you should make, scratch that, have to make as a legal practitioner.
You are asking the lawyer to help you with these decisions by pointing out things for you to research “so that I can more effectively find even more information”. You are asking for assistance on what to research.
Not finding a controlling case on point that is in your favor? Malpractice. Erroneously saying that a case stands for something and it doesn’t? Malpractice. Depending on a case that has been recently overruled? Malpractice. (All of these can be ethical violations too.)
Here’s a tiny sampling of rulings illustrating how important it is to get your research right.
Lawyers aren’t just guys that show up in court and write letters. A huge portion of practicing is research. Doing research wrong exposes a lawyer to liability. Your request for information isn’t a trivial matter that lawyers take lightly, it’s you asking for pointers or guidance or help or any of a number of synonyms for advice on how you should handle a major and seriously important part of your case.
Asking a lawyer for help on doing research is asking for advice, and there is no reason for them to give it to you for free when you might turn around and sue them for it, nor is it the kind of thing that should be done off the cuff during a free consult.
I cannot make it any more clear to you that you are indeed asking these lawyers for advice. You are in the wrong, and your pernicious refusal to learn from the very people you are asking for help is either the summit of arrogance, the nadir of of rationality, or run-of-the-mill craziness.
Because, by the common definition of “advice” (“An opinion recommended or offered, as worthy to be followed” [wiktionary.org], or “recommendation regarding a decision or course of conduct” [m-w.com]), there is no recommendation in the statement “Helium has more electrons in each atom than Hydrogen”; there is no course of action than is offered as worthy to be followed.
Granted, by other definitions of advice (e.g. legal definition), the above statement may constitute advice under the right circumstances.
In lay terms, a more accurate statement from the physicist would be:
“I don’t want to give you information related in any way to how to build a bomb.”
In Stoid’s case
“I don’t want to give you information related in any way to how to represent yourself in this legal case.”
which, of course may be identical in meaning to
“I don’t want to give you legal advice in this case.”
but the former way does not use the word “advice” in a way that is different from common/lay usage.
That’s the whole point…the guy I have on retainer is not an expert in everything. And I don’t have more money to pay someone else. So I am not asking anyone else to even look at my actual case., I"m asking about the law that relates to my case.
And after I find out all I can find out, I can make a better decision about what to do. Then Retainer Man takes a look to make sure I haven’t screwed up.
(So far so good, by the way, all the times we’ve done this previously.)
Thank you. You have no idea how delightful it is to be understood.
And, to whomever I saw who didn’t understand disingenuous in this context… we’re back to defining advice. The completely accurate and clear way for the physicist to respond would be to say: “I am not comfortable providing information to you without knowing how you intend to use that information.” or, alternatively, “Because I am not comfortable with your intended use of the information, I do not want to be the one to provide it.”
I was going to insert explanations on both statements, then realized it wasn’t necessary. I’m not asking anyone to justify their decision to assist me with information or not. I’m asking them not to mischaracterize what I have asked them for and then tell me they won’t give it to me. It’s infuriating. Telling me you don’t want to help me won’t kill me…or you. It just keeps the conversation short, which is what we both would prefer, I think. (and telling me you don’t want to give me advice triggers a longer conversation, I find. Truth = better.)
The fact that lawyers are worried about being sued for retarded reasons?
Priceless
You’ve got a poor analogy. If Stoid was asking where the courthouse is, or if the supreme court is higher than the district court or some other purely factual matter, then that’s not advice, .
If the bombmaker instead asked “What books should I read to learn about nuclear fission?” then your analogy would be more illustrative, and clarify why your subsequent point about legal advice being different than normal advice is incorrect.
But given that Stoid has replied with her usual clarion prose and refusal to understand the world, and she has been vindicated by polerius’ bad analogy, I don’t know why I bother.
I don’t get it. Are you implying that lawyers go out and tell people who to sue? That people don’t hire lawyers, but that lawyers hire clients? That there isn’t Rule 11 that is meant to punish lawyers who bring worthless cases?
OOOHH I see. You were trying to be funny by making a cutting observation about the profession! Your post iskind of like a thematic apperception test. Neat!
Well, since you’re clearly not getting that this is a MAJOR ETHICAL ISSUE for lawyers and of MORE concern than money, let’s go with the only thing you seem to care about: money. If you went to a primary care physician (PCP) and he referred you to a specialist in neurology would you:
a) go and research the problem yourself, coming back to your PCP when you get stuck with medical jargon in Grey’s Anatomy.
b) go research the problem yourself, going to the specialist for free information on which lobe he felt mental retardation most likely shows up in, then go back to your PCP to double check your results because, after all, the PCP can’t know everything!
c) Pay the neurologist for a specialized visit because you’re asking for information he’s paid to receive, charges to give out, and is the most qualified to answer
d) rail against the system that only lets qualified medical facilities have CAT Scans, thus ensuring those who wish to examine their brains at home go without.
Bonus question: would your answer change if you found that medicine made perfect sense to you? If, in fact, you loved it? If you can spend an entire day in a medical research facility, following the leads from one medical case, idea, or procedure to another, chasing down every branch into new territory, seeing the underlying reasoning of how this fits into that? If you thought about going into medicine 20 years ago?
I’m very confused. You are paying an attorney, but you’re putting your questions to the SDMB?? Will you give me some information on this fee arrangement? For instance, what does your attorney tell you he is billing you for? Or what does he claim your retainer payments are getting you?