This has been mildly interesting to read how you attorneys are saying you are not so bad. I flashed back to the Elephant Man when he was combing his hair. However, that scene had the pathos of somebody who had no control over his fate. You folks went WAY out of your way and spent a lot of time to become outcasts.
Random, I do know what I am talking about. The girl friend did not bring up the info about CA Bar inactivity. It was in the LA Times.
Lawyers did not go “WAY out of [their] way and spent a lot of time to become outcasts.” They perform a vital and difficult service for society, one that is generally misunderstood by society, and have to live with getting pilloried for it. I have never seen any of the lawyers or legal students on this board ever do anything to become an outcast.
Certainly the legal practice is not free of bottom feeders, and may even attract them, but that is by no means a significant portion of them. For every baseless lawsuit brought to court, or obviously guilty person defended in court, not only is there a lawyer doing it, there is a person paying a lawyer to do so. Yet, the legal profession, which must try to represent both sides, bears the blunt of the criticism. Somehow, society expects that where there is demand for a service, supply will not naturally occur. This is patently absurd.
Is the legal system perfect? Certainly not. However, will blaming the entire legal profession help anything? To think so is as stupid as standing on the side of the road swearing at your car instead of looking under the hood to see what the problem might be. The question should not be whether all lawyers are pond scum, because if you’ve ever seen a post by Jodi or Bricker here, that is impossible to believe. Rather, specific problems ought to be debated, such as “does the California Bar not take appropriate action to prevent misconduct by lawyers?”
To claim that lawyers must be the cause of society’s scorn for their profession is as stupid and unreasonable as claiming that blacks were the ones responsible for them being discriminated against. Yes, they have control over their fate (in both cases). That does not mean that they are responsible for society’s irrational beliefs about them.
Biffer, if your goal is to lose, I’m sure you can manage that without the assistance of a lawyer.
Mipsman, the California Bar did have some problems back in the 1980’s due to a huge backlog in its disciplinary system, which since has been reformed.
As for attorneys going out of our way to be “outcasts”, the difference between attorneys and non-attorneys is a specialized education and passage of an examination. That should make us “outcasts”? With that kind of reasoning doctors, accountants, plumbers, electricians, and engineers should be “outcasts” as well.
I use the term “outcast” because people do not like you. How high above used car salesmen do attorney rank in the polls? If society in general does not take the time to understand the lovable, fun-loving, inner attorney within you it might be because they are turned off by the pools of slime that form whenever you stand in one place for a while.
So, not too many takers on my suggestion that what people resent is not lawyers per se, but the fact that the legal aspect of interaction seems to often take precedence over the human dimension.
Also, you might be able to have a system of laws, without quite as many lawyers as the U.S. “enjoys”.
This has got to be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen posted in Great Debates. Unfortunately, responding fully would require starting a whole Pit thread to express my opinion of this accurately, which I really don’t have the inclination to do. So for now I’ll just bite my tongue and hope one of the lawyers rightfully offended by your comments (and what do you do for a living anyways?) takes it to the Pit so I can voice my disgust in the language it deserves.
Or perhaps you’ll succeed in driving the rest of the lawyers off of the board. Congratulations on getting rid of Jodi guys. But it looks like Billdo returned recently, so I don’t think the slime factor will go down.
Dammit! my tongue hurts from being bitten so hard.
is it possible we need to modify the system because it no longer copes with current technology.
if MOST jurors don’t know enough about science to deal with DNA evidence and computer simulations does that mean we need qualification tests for jurors or maintain a cadre of jurors. pay $1000 per year, if they qualify, to be called to jury duty. we end up with people on death row who are later PROVEN innocent by DNA!!! there is incompetence somewhere.
Dal Timgar
When I read the lawyer threads in the BBQ Pit last night I vowed that I was going to stay out of this debate. However, after reading what’s been said in several of these threads I find that I can’t. I’m not going to address anyone’s posts specifically, but I would like to share some of my thoughts.
DISCLAIMER: The word “you” is used in a general sense and is not directed at any poster in particular.
I am a third-year law student who will graduate next July, and quite frankly, it’s not something that I’m anticipating. I’m not stupid – I know how some people feel about lawyers, and there have been many days when I’ve actually broken down crying because of the horrible thoughts I’ve had about myself for entering this field. I regret that I’ve allowed someone else’s negative opinions to affect my self image to this degree.
Contrary to what some people may believe, I did not go to law school so I could get rich by suing people. At this point I’ll be happy as long as I can earn enough to pay off my student loans (I’m paying for school myself, just as I did in undergrad). Though I did want to try and help people who needed help, my real motivation for going back to school was that I was bored at my job and I felt I needed a challenge.
Unfortunately it seems that the real challenge is convincing some people that I’m not a money-grabbing, scum-sucking leech who’s out to inflict pain on as many people as possible.
Anyone who knows me in real life will tell you that I am one of the most non-confrontational people you will ever meet; people who knew me from undergrad were shocked to find out that I went to law school at all. However, when some people find out that I’m in law school, it seems as though their opinion of me changes completely. Some of them smirk and say things like “oh, you’re gonna go sue big companies and make millions, huh?” Others glare at me like I just told them that I eat kittens on a regular basis. Then there’s the ever-popular, “oh, but I’m sure you’ll be one of the few honest lawyers.” It upsets me that people feel they can make snap judgments about my character just because I happen to be studying law.
Just for the record, most of my classmates probably will not end up with six-figure salaries or get new cars every year. It’s true that I have friends who earned large sums of money for their summer internships in fields like taxation, but it’s also true that I know people who were paid significantly less for government work.
Not everyone who goes to law school is there to get rich. Hell, not everyone in law school is there to be a lawyer. I happen to be one of those people. I don’t plan to practice law because, as I already stated in another thread, I’m already having serious health problems because of the stress. Luckily there are many alternative careers for someone with a law degree, and they are becoming increasingly popular with students.
Even though the distinction has been made between various types of lawyers, I find this distinction to be just as insulting. I resent the implication that I (and a few others on the board) may be the exception in a profession of crooked people.
In my 25 years of life, I have met good people and bad people. I have met good doctors and bad doctors, good cops and bad cops, good teachers and bad teachers … I could list every occupation here, but this thread would go on forever. My point is that I would never judge an entire profession, or a subsection of a profession, for that matter, based on my experiences with one member of that group. For example, when I was suffering from severe fatigue, a general practitioner told me that my symptoms were all in my head and that I was just a hypochondriac. Another doctor later diagnosed me with hypoglycemia and determined that to be the cause of the fatigue. Does that mean that most doctors are good, but all GPs are idiots? Absolutely not – it just means that the one doctor that I saw was incompetent.
It sickens me that people think such a classification is acceptable for lawyers, and I resent being told that I’m just oversensitive or that I can’t take a joke or that I’m slime by default so I deserve whatever I get.
I always get to know someone before I form any opinions about that person’s character. All I’m asking is that you extend me the same courtesy.
Ladybug, there are a lot of people out there who think that they can do no wrong. Let’s say one of those people is a business owner who disregards equal opportunity employment laws. Let’s also say that he is not very bright, inarticulate, but nevertheless convinced that he knows the law and how to run his business better than anyone else, including his attorney.
Because of these personal flaws and the way they cause him to run his business, he gets sued for discriminatory practices. His attorney sees that the business owner has exposure, and that he would make the world’s worst witness, because he is kind of dim, and won’t take advice. The attorney therefore recommends settlement.
Now, at this point, someone with average sense would change his business practices. Not our guy. He insists that he knows best and gets sucessfully sued ten more times for similar violations. He finally quits the business in frustration.
Human nature being what it is, he of course doesn’t blame himself for his failures. Instead, it’s all the fault of the employees’ attorneys, his own attorney, and the legal system as a whole.
Sound familiar?
Sure, there are bad attorneys out there. In my experience though, the people that scream about lawyers and the legal system are those that have done something wrong and been spanked for it. The loudest complainers are those that have an almost pathological inability to admit that they have done something wrong.
I have a few clients that fall into this category. They are both the best of clients and the worst of clients.
They are the worst, because they never take advice, are excessively combative, and are always getting into trouble as a result.
They are the best, because they never take advice, are excessively combative, and are always getting into trouble as a result.
I also have clients who quietly and competently run sucessful businesses year after year. After getting them started with the appropriate business form and necessary contracts, years may go by with no serious issues arising.
Guess which type of client I enjoy working with more, and which type generates more fees?
You are entering a profession where you can cause great harm, but you can also help people in trouble, or who want to accomplish something in life. Don’t let people like Wild Bill make you give up before you start.
Update: I received a favorable, unpublished per curiam decision yesterday. And, what is in my opinion the most significant portion of the case is addressed superficially in a brief final paragraph of a 7 page decision, and the court’s analysis (in my client’s favor) is absolutely incorrect.
I’m so proud. Whoohoo!
Congratulations Dinsdale. Well done. Don’t take what I’m about to write amiss. I really am sincere in my congratulations…your client was lucky to have you representing him/her.
However, given what you just wrote, doesn’t this speak to the issue of where people get their bad feelings about attorneys? By your own admission justice was probably not served in this case which, as I believe I’ve mentioned before, is odd since one would think an officer of the court should be concerned with justice.
You did an excellent job, as you should, for your client within a system setup long before you ever got here. Nevertheless the loser in the case may well walk away knowing he/she somehow just got screwed but doesn’t know enough about the system and how it works to figure exactly where. He/she is probably just left with a sneaking suspicion that they should have hired a better attorney.
That some people screw-up over and over again and manage to blame anyone but themselves is without doubt. Yet sometimes people do behave as they should and still get screwed over as it seems happened to your opponent. Can you blame that person for harboring ill thoughts of attorneys and/or the justice system from here on out?
Hey, I know, it’s a tough world that isn’t always fair. That doesn’t mean we have to like and accept it.
Dinsdale, congratulations, counselor.
I joined the thread late (because I joined the SDMB late…), but I think Dinsdale’s earlier points regarding the distaste for the profession held by many are valid. That is, perhaps it is the base self-serving instinct possessed by many that comes to light in legal conflict—with attorneys being the embodiment of that instinct.
As my Civ Pro professor was fond of saying, “If everyone were honest and forthright, there would be no need for attorneys.”
Thank you, and Goodnight.