The “work for free” bit was a joke- every state bar association requires its members to put in a certain number of pro bono hours, or to donate a certain amount to legal aid funds in lieu of the hours… and in any case, it was pretty clear that none of the resident attorneys would have taken the case even if they’d been asked and were California-licensed attorneys specializing in dissolution of corporations and family law.
The point remains- Stoid wanted the benefits of having an attorney without the drawbacks.
Man, do you miss the point. We’ll happily shoot the shit for free, just like everyone on this MB who knows something about something. We won’t represent a client for free. We won’t because it takes substantially more time, effort, and resources, and we have to feed our families same as anyone. And we won’t because it creates a client relationship that opens us to liability (liabiliity which isn’t on our malpractice insurance). But now, the brief is written and the decision is handed down – Stoid is, functionally, no longer asking for legal advice. So the situation is different in a fundamental way.
Incidentally, the ability to do this – to see which particular change in facts leads to a significant change in the fundamentals of the situation – is the base underlying skill of the lawyer.
The voluminous after-the-fact insight that lawyers have produced in this thread, perfectly free of charge, leads me to conclude one thing.
The next time a poster wants some free legal advice, all they should do is start a thread about a pending court case, but act as though the case has already occurred. The more arrogant the poster acts about their self-represented position, the more “legal advice” they will get, because of course, a lawyer will not sit idly by while a non-lawyer acts as though they are more of act legal expert than they. The lawyer will go out of their way to prove that this arrogant poster is no match for their brilliance, and out comes some of the best advice money can buy.
If Stoid had phrased her issue as a hypothetical there would have been dozens of people falling over themselves to answer her question - although having said that, it was an awfully specific question.
I know a few people who end up in a bad place after a break-up. I feel nothing but sorrow for them because it’s so spiritually draining. I’m just glad that children weren’t involved.
My hope is that Stoid will channel her tenacity and enthusiasm into a positive venture that will enrich her life spiritually, emotionally, and financially. Life is too short.
This, this, this. I’ve seen this repeated sooo many times over legal issues, medical issues, feminist issues, minority issues, ad nauseum.
‘I know I’m right, so let’s go back and find where someone else went wrong. It doesn’t matter how unlikely that turns out to be, it’s more likely than me being wrong.’
True. Virginia does have Rule 6.1(a), which holds: “A lawyer should render at least two percent per year of the lawyer’s professional time to pro bono publico legal services. Pro bono publico services include poverty law, civil rights law, public interest law, and volunteer activities designed to increase the availability of pro bono legal services.”
So there’s a pretty specific expectation, but the title for Rule 6.1 is “Voluntary Pro Bono Publico Service,” and it’s by no means mandatory.
But you could have put in the same effort as it would take to “shoot the shit”. Or not, if you didn’t want to. But that’s not an ethical issue.
That’s a valid distinction. But like a lot of other legal distinctions, it’s somewhat arbitrary.
The notion that - based on her continuing a lawsuit directly relating to the breakup of her relationship, business and home - Stoid was going to sue anyone in this forum (even without winning it) seemed farfetched. But if you suspect she’s one of these crazies who never let go, then she can keep it up now. You read all the time about people who sue forever, and every time they lose a lawsuit they start a new suit suing everyone involved in the prior one. If Stoid was really that crazy you’re not safe even now. (Is there no room for further appeal on this case after she lost this round? If there is, then all the legal analysis provided here has a bearing on her chances and possibly on strategy.)
I agree that the chances (negligible though I find them to be to begin with) are lower now. But I think the real distinction is elsewhere.
Agree that the risk of Stoid suing someone in this thread for malpractice is, while not zero, pretty small.
Also agree with the prior posters who said that the “work for free” objection was kind of a joke. Of course we aren’t going to do 10 hours of legal research for free, and of course nobody thought that was what was being asked.
From my perspective, the real problem was that Stoid’s questions did not make a lot of sense, and gave the sense of somebody who (1) sincerely believed she had been wronged, and (2) was convinced that anybody who did not see it her way was obviously a crook or a liar or someone who had been duped by a crook or a liar.
It is not my intent to rub salt in Stoid’s wounds. She is in a crappy situation and I wish her no ill will.
At the same time, I don’t trust her. I don’t trust her to listen to what I am saying. So, when someone like her asks me a legal question, I don’t want to give her an answer, because I believe – based on lessons I’ve learned the hard way and lessons I’ve seen other’s learn the VERY hard way – that she is only going to hear what she wants to hear and disregard the rest. And that means that, in my judgment, my giving her an answer to her question will do more harm than good. And who am I to make that judgment? I am a professional, who takes my professional duties seriously.
I have repeatedly used a medical analogy. It never seems to impress anybody but that has not stopped me from trying again. It’s like she started a thread in which she said "I have a pain in my side. I can tell it’s my appendix. I talked to a doctor friend of mine who said that of all the patient’s he’s had I know more about medicine, and in fact I know more than some doctors he knows. So now I am trying to figure out how to remove the appendix. I rubbed alcohol on my side. I wasn’t sure which kind to use, so I just got some vodka and used that. Now I’m trying to figure out what I should use to make the incision in my abdomen. I have a paring knife and also a carving knife that I can use. And please don’t tell me about scalpels. I know all about scalpels because i’ve been reading about them, and I happen to know that the carving knife I have is made by the same company that makes scalpels, and I think that all that scalpel stuff is just a scam…
And on and on it would go.
While I wish Stoid no ill will, at the same time, I think she has caused a lot of headache for lots of people by pursuing a meritless case. The court dockets are crowded. This appeal was not legitimate. She also made, what seem to me, to be totally nasty and baseless accusations against, for example, the trial court judge and the receiver. These were folks who were just doing their jobs.
But you could have put in the same effort as it would take to “shoot the shit”.[.quote]
This is false. I know you’re not going to believe me, but that’s the facts, jack.
Also, the period goes inside the quotation marks.
Also false. Shooting the shit is shooting the shit. If I’m wrong about something, nobody gets hurt. Answering particular questions about a live matter without doing a full investigation of the facts and applicable law is unethical because it risks steering a person in the wrong direction when real consequences are at stake.
So what? (I mean, you’re wrong, but even if not.) It exists, and nobody on these threads wrote the rules.
I can’t agree. Stoid didn’t know that’s what she was asking for, but it is what she was in fact asking for. The problem came when we all told her this, and she refused to believe it.
This is why the work for free objection isn’t meritless – I can write a post about some legal issue based on what I remember from a class I took a decade ago in five minutes, and if I get it wrong, I get it wrong. There’s little deleterious effect on the person who asked the question. As I said in my prior post, I can’t address a live issue – even the same issue! – in the same amount of time in a real case because I would first have to assure myself (through at least some investigation) that my understanding of the facts was accurate, I’d have to verify that my remembered view is accurate, I’d have to update my position based on any relevant changes to the law in the intervening decade, and I’d have to brainstorm about any other factual or legal cul-de-sacs that might affect the outcome – which I’d also have to chase down. Giving an answer in a live issue without doing all that demands much more time and also access to research materials I have to pay for. Failure to do it is unethical, as well as immoral and liability-creating (and she’s not on my malpractice insurance).
Bingo. The standard of car is much higher when someone is actually going to rely on your answer compared to shooting the shit on the Rule Against Perpetuities. Throw in the fact that Stoid is in California litigating a corporate issue, none of us have seen the Operating Agreement for StoidCo, most of us aren’t licensed in California, and thus are unfamiliar with the nuances of the Corporate law there, the specific facts of her case, and the local procedural rules there.
Ok, fair enough. Perhaps I was too flip in dismissing this argument.
I was trying to explain to the non-lawyer audience why we lawyers couldn’t “just answer her question” and be done with it. I think you have done a better job of that than I have. The problem is, as you said, that when someone is going to rely on our answer, we can’t just go off the top of our heads. We have a duty to do things like a reasonable investigation of the underlying facts and the case law.
What I was trying to explain in my post is some of the rationale behind that duty. I was trying to explain, again, to the non-lawyer audience, why giving an answer off the top of my head can do more harm than good for all concerned.
Your point, I think, is that there is JUST NO WAY to give a quick answer to a question like he ones Stoid was asking. Again, to return to my medical analogy, it’s like someone asking whether they should take a certain drug for these recurrent headaches that she’s been having. A doctor is going to refuse to answer that question without doing some investigation.
My sense from reading some of the posts by non-lawyers in these threads was that they thought that we lawyers knew the answer to Stoid’s questions, but just wouldn’t tell her out of a desire to keep the guild’s secret knowledge from outsiders. What I was trying to explain (and I think you and Bricker and others were trying to explain as well) was that it doesn’t work that way, that there is NO WAY to answer her question without doing several hours (at least) of investigation. This difficulty was compounded by the fact that, as many of us have noted, Stoid was quick to dismiss any suggestion that there were any weaknesses whatsoever in her legal position.
I guess what I’m saying is, I think I understood by what everyone meant by saying they weren’t willing to work for free, but I think it may have been misunderstood by the non-lawyers. I think it may have come across as, “I could tell you which washer to replace on that laundry machine, but I paid a lot of money for the secret repair manual and I’m not just going to give away my knowledge for free.” I think it was more like “I know it sounds like a simple question to ask, which washer do I need to replace, but there is a lot more too it than that. These laundry machines can cause an electrical fire if you don’t repair them the right way, and I would need to take a look at the machine in order to figure out what to do, and that is a very involved task.”