I’m sorry. Is there something about law school that turns all lawyers into self-agrandizing douchebags?
I get that as a non-attorney I’m not supposed to practice law. Even if I was an attorney, a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client. However, that should in no way stop me from researching and understanding the law as it applied to a particular situation I may find myself in. Such information might be useful in deciding whether or not I may wish to retain the services of a lawyer. It may also be useful when dealing with my attorney so I can understand what the fuck he is talking about.
Who here is saying you shouldn’t educate yourself? If you had ass cancer you’d read up on it, no? Perhaps using resources provided by the treating hospital, or, say a local library? What you probably wouldn’t do is run willy-nilly into your dentist’s office and demand he tell you all he knows about ass cancer, then get mad when he tells you that he can’t give you advice on such matters because he would be liable if he was wrong. What you also probably wouldn’t do is start looking for a case history matching the exact facts of your illness and become convinced that if/when you find it, you will know exactly the future course of your own ass cancer.
There are many, many resources for pro se litigants – from information provided by the court system to well written books to guide the layperson (I have often heard the Nolo Press line recommended, although I have no personal experience) to low cost consultations provided by local Bar Associations.
A few years ago, when my wonderfully bratty youngest niece was having heart problems that were going to require surgery, my sister (her mother) was incredibly anxious about the prospect; doubly so, as my son had died of a similar ailment The surgeon doing the operation listened patiently as she asked question after question after question. But of course he could never satisfy her, because my sister hadn’t the years of education and training to know the right technical questions to ask. Ultimately and happily he managed to persuade her that the correct thing to do was to assess him, his competence, and his character and decide whether he was trustworthy rather than to try to tell him how to do his job.
The situation with laywers seems similar. It’s not possible for a person studying the law in a non-systematic, undirected, non-heuristic fashion, as Stoid is doing, to adequately assess the material.
How do you get that from these threads? Nobody is stopping Stoid from researching. She has boasted about how much time she spends in the law library so that the workers know her by name. She has access to all the information in a major law school library. She does not need information. She needs advice on how to use that information or advice on how to narrow her search. The information isn’t being hidden from her. And the lawyers around here are a bit gun shy to give her anything that could come close to advice for several reasons that have popped up in multiple threads. I never went to law school but it was pretty easy for me to figure out.
Actually, you’re quite mistaken. No one’s stopping you from representing yourself in a case. You’re not conducting the unauthorized practice of law. We’ve gone over this a dozen times in the other thread. No one has told Stoid that she CAN’T research her case, ask questions, or represent herself. It’s just that it’s usually a bad decision to represent oneself. In Stoid’s case, it’s an especially bad decision.
My point precisely. Asking a dentist about ass cancer is pretty much exactly like asking any given random herd of lawyers about any given fact-specific scenario. Most likely, they couldn’t answer you even if they wanted to.
Does a Dentist have more inherent knowledge of certain types of cancer + access to medical journals and other sources of research than the average layperson? yes. Does that mean he must answer your questions? No.
Typically because we want everyone to know how smart we are and that we understand all the ramifications of events, instead of just saying what happened. Also, we all think we understand the case better than the lawyers actually acting as lawyers, so it’s impossible to prep us properly.
These are the reasons that come off the top of my head:
We have a difficult time answering questions, as you can see from these threads. Words have meaning, and often particular meaning, and so a lawyer winds up coming off as over-thinking his answers. Plus, being a lawyer tends to make you cautious, so you wind up qualifying your answers, which is understandable while practicing, but when you’re a witness, it looks bad.
Plus, there’s a prejudice against lawyers, to begin with, so you have to overcome that.
An example from my own life: following law school, I was a witness in a trial. I’d never practiced, but I had represented clients as part of a free legal clinic in school. So, the guy had me on the stand, and he was asking me questions to establish that I had been at a relevant place and time. Easy stuff, I would think. Plus, this wasn’t controversial, and I knew what he wanted me to say.
But, he was screwing it up. He wasn’t asking the right questions, and I had a hard time trying to answer, versus focusing on the “craft” of examination, which he was botching mightily. So, I imagine I came off as less credible than I ought to have, simply because I was distracted. Make sense?
Please point out where a single person has ever told Stoid to stop researching and understand the law as it applies to her situation. And while you’re at it, please stop demonstrating that not all douchebags practice law.
Do you see the irony in that, at long last (three years!), we have finally gotten to the only thing Stoid has ever wanted from attorneys: free information about how much better she is at all of this than we are.
Clearly there is this whole thing with **Stoid **that I was not aware of. I was simply responding to **DSYoungEsq’s ** OP about people in general not asking a message board for legal advice. (Also I don’t want to imply that I was personally singling DSYoungEsq out as a douchebag. At least not any more or less than any other lawyer. )
Look, I can’t help it if every jerk who reads my…oh wait…you were talking about me. I get it now.
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