Is lawyer licensing necessary?

[Grossbottom]

@brickbacon

No I’m not confusing anything. You are conflating two different arguments I’ve made.

I see. So Grossbottom asserts that the lower and middle classes can get decent legal representation at reasonable prices, to which you respond with an argument that lawyers don’t try very hard for pro bono clients. In other words, a response unrelated to my original assertion, and in trying to untangle them, I’m suddenly confused? Naw, I don’t think so. We’re done here.

@brickbacon

Please tell me why you think a free market always leads to more corruption? It’s just not the case.

I didn’t say that before and don’t think it now, my last post said we’re a free market with a few controls. My primary dispute with you derives from your attempt to use a perceived lack of charity in the present system to justify replacement with a system that has no room for charity, at all. It makes no sense, and nothing you’ve said has improved upon that condition. It would be like replacing the wooden furniture in my office with steel, because the wood wasn’t warm and soft enough. Does not compute.

@brickbacon

Lawyering exist long before the bar, and could exist if it were eliminated.

I said that in my first post to this thread. We’re done here as well.

@brickbacon

These “controls” are causing problems that have to be weighed against the benefits. I feel the negatives outweigh the positives. Don’t pretend like recognizing a faulty system requires one to subscribe to a fringe ideology.

You know, if someone’s got a problem with a code of ethics, then maybe they’re just not cut out for professions that have ethics codes. You can sit here and argue to me allllll day that getting rid of rules like “don’t boff your clients” and “you can only take N% of the damages on contingency” will actually make the profession more ethical, but somehow I’m just not buying it. Hey, I must be crazy. Because if we repealed all the traffic laws, we’d stop having car accidents, am I right?

Now a word about this free market thing you’re on about: a) we already live in a free market, and b) the controls that you don’t want are the result of that same free market. These rules are internally, rather than externally, formulated and imposed. The state bars were created by the very free market you claim to be promoting, by the lawyers that comprise that free market. So where are you going with this? The market should be free for everything you happen to want, but you just can’t do it in groups? We can’t have lawyer clubs and lawyer schools, even though these insitutions were created by and function very well in the free market?

The state bars are the free market, they evolved from the free market, they are of the free market. Same with the schools. And that free market, of its own volition, decided to impose these quality controls. These quality controls are the result of pursuing the very same model for which you’ve been advocating. I said it, and then you repeated it: once upon a time, it was a market without controls. Now it has them, evolved from within, imposed by choice. It doesn’t get more free market than that.

If you don’t like the current system, then I wonder why you’re proposing to remake it. Because if you just did away with the system, the lawyers would quickly move to rebuild it and reimpose the same restraints upon themselves. A couple of years later, you’d just have 50 new state bars and a new national organization and a bunch of new law schools. Today is what the free market looks like at this point in its evolution. Your argument is a nullity is as much as it claims to promote free market ideas, because unrestrained free market only for individuals but not for groups of those same individuals isn’t free market, it’s just would-be ubermensch fantasy.

[pravnik]

At current rates, attorneys working forty-hours a week, with two-weeks a year vacation each year, would earn from $75,000, to $123,000 a year. I’m sure that my readers would love making the kind of money the Massachusetts lawyers scoffed at. Indeed, according to census data, fewer than 50% of Massachusetts citizens earn over $51,000 a year. A salary of $75,000 or more would put someone in the top 20% of wage earners in Massachusetts. In other words, the lawyers would out-do 4 out of 5 working stiffs.

@brickbacon

Plenty of smart, competent people would love to make that much money if they didn’t have to put out 100k for a certified legal education.

In addition to the mistake of assuming all hours are billable, the author made another mistake, which is pointed out in a link to another article:

The other side of the Massachusetts story

Your analogy would hold if the so-called $74,000 - $115,000 were wages. It is not. It is gross. It is not take home pay. A friend of my college student son’s initially took the same position you did - and then I asked him: "Suppose - for that $37.50 - $61.50.an hour, before you took home one cent for your family, you, from that gross income, after waiting four to six months after providing the services to be allowed to bill the Commonwealth, you first had to pay for:

1. Malpractice insurance, yourself.
2. Health insurance, 100% your self.
3. Your fax, copier, printer, and all other equipment, 100% yourself.
4. Your licensing fees (the BBO fee this year is $350.00 - no reduction for those who take cases at below-market rates).
5. Your internet costs (you must have internet to bill), 100% yourself.
6. Your phone, heat, light, cleaning, and every sheet of paper and printer/copier/fax cartridges, 100%, yourself.
7. Either pay your staff’s salary, benefits, into the unemployment security fund, health insurance, etc. 100% yourself - or have no staff and file every sheet of paper, answer every call, and do all maintenance (unbillable) and all billing (time unbillable) yourself - staff often nets more than court-appointed attorneys do.
8. By the way, anyone with an office here is out $6000 - $12000 a year, even for a small one.

MY SON’S 20 YEAR OLD FRIEND SAID, “Never mind. I do better at Burger King”.

The other side of the Massachusetts story

[pravnik]

And by the way, just so you don’t miss it, my response to your last post is on page 2, post 99.

[Random]

@brickbacon

Plenty of smart, competent people would love to make that much money if they didn’t have to put out 100k for a certified legal education.

Maybe so. But as pravnik has shown, in demolishing your arguments, your hypothetical “smart, competent person” would:

a) make a whole lot less money than he thought he would; and

b) likely do a piss-poor job representing his clients, because of his demonstrated lack of ability in spotting practical and logical flaws in an argument
A glance at today’s timesheet shows a pretty good day. 7.3 billable hours, for a working day that started at 8:30 this morning and ended at about 6 (40 minutes ago) No lunch or other breaks. Timesheet also shows 1.5 on nonbillable administrative tasks, and the remaining 0.7 is just lost transition time. That’s a way, way lower percentage of lost time than usual.

[Dinsdale]

Haven’t been keeping up with the thread. Demands of golf on a public servant, you know!
But wanted to comment on a couple of things I saw from a quick scan.
On the issue of lawyers being more or less ethical than the average professional. One wrinkle I don’t believe has been mentioned is that many a lawyer (certainly not all) conflate “ethical” with “legal.” And they believe that just because something is not illegal, then it is “right.” We all know there are countless legal ways to screw someone over - and plenty of attys (not all or even a majority), take advantage of those opportunities on a regular basis.
Re: billing. Random, you sound like a responsible biller. But in my practice, I could name any number of whores who take full advantage of the quarter hour minimum. If you are in the correct fee situation, and really push things, you can bill more hours than you work. Most folks don’t, but the ones who do really put a bad taste in your mouth.
I remember when I was in private practice, if I would take my mail into the john and bill by a tenth of an hour, you can bill a good hour or more during the course of a healthy morning’s dump!
Not having to bill - and argue with clients over bills - may well be the single best thing about working for the government.

[Hamlet]

@Random

Timesheet also shows 1.5 on nonbillable administrative tasks, and the remaining 0.7 is just lost transition time. That’s a way, way lower percentage of lost time than usual.

Looks like it’s time to get that catheter. Gotta cut down on that lost “transition” time.

[Random]

@Hamlet

Looks like it’s time to get that catheter. Gotta cut down on that lost “transition” time.

Guess so. Thing is, to the best of recollection, I didn’t even lose any time to that today. Unusual day. One meeting (or whatever) just followed another, all day long. Maybe I spent 15 minutes talking to coworkers about non-work topics, or glancing at e-mails that weren’t work related.

The one personal call I got, I had to cut short after just a few minutes, because my other line rang with a call I had to take.

Feel bad about that, too. (My parents just got back from Charleston, and my dad toured the Yorktown. He was pretty excited, as he spent a year onboard in 1952-3. His call was to tell me about it. I should’ve called him back instead of posting here, but he’s in bed by now. Tomorrow, I guess.)

[Sevastopol]

Absolutely, licensing is necessary. In fact, there should also be a bag-limit during the season.

[brickbacon]

@pravnik

Well, what’s the security net, then? How do people like the guy in my example get stopped? How do market forces stop him? Word of mouth, or what? Lawyers have people’s lives in their hands, and guys like that can do a lot of damage before they’re stopped.

It probably won’t stop guys like that, nothing will.

@pravnik

I’m being facetious with that, but my point is that higher education isn’t the same as trade school. The goal is to become an educated person, in all aspects of your field. You don’t go to law school to learn the law and come out knowing everything you need, you go to learn to think like a lawyer and come out knowing how to find out anything you need to find out. If the complaint is that law school isn’t practical enough, fine, take steps to make it more practical. Some schools do this; Baylor law school in Texas, for example, is well known for having a program that turns you out on the street ready to practice law as soon as you graduate. Law school can do a lot of good. Doing away with law school altogether would be throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

But is law school imperative? The bar thinks it is, but apparently, the %50 of students not showing up to class because they are not learning anything don’t. By mandating a certified law school education, you are doing nothing but pricing many people out of the system.

@pravnik

“That’s no ideal to me; That’s a living, working reality.” I’m telling you point blank I go to the mat for everyone who walks into my office, regardless of who is paying or not paying the bills.

But what percentage of lawyers are as ethical as you? Probably not a whole lot. Your conduct aside, there is clearly a huge problem with the system as a whole.

@pravnik

The author is making the mistake of assuming you can bill every hour you’re at work. It doesn’t work that way. If someone’s working forty hours a week and billing the county for forty hours a week, he’s committing fraud.

Which no lawyer would ever do :dubious: I know you can’t bill ever hour you are at work, but finding time to bill 40 hours a week is not particularly difficult, and doesn’t negate his general point.

@pravnik

What the heck is the better system? How exactly is a free market going to regulate malpractice and ethical breaches?

One which allows a law equivalent of H&R Block to do mundane, routine legal tasks at a low cost, a national (Ebay style) feedback system that allows people to rate lawyers, and one that doesn’t mandate one sacrifice 100k, and 3 years to do work that does not require that level of preparation.

[brickbacon]

@Grossbottom

I see. So Grossbottom asserts that the lower and middle classes can get decent legal representation at reasonable prices, to which you respond with an argument that lawyers don’t try very hard for pro bono clients. In other words, a response unrelated to my original assertion, and in trying to untangle them, I’m suddenly confused? Naw, I don’t think so. We’re done here.

Are you really this dense? Lower class people cannot get decent legal representation because they have no/little money, and you can’t get the vast majority of lawyers to work hard for little to no money. This is a very simple concept.

@Grossbottom

I didn’t say that before and don’t think it now, my last post said we’re a free market with a few controls.

No, we’re not a free market as evidenced by the fact you cannot practice law without a license. Let me introduce you to the definition of a free market

A free market is a market where price is determined by the unregulated interchange of supply and demand rather than set by artificial means.[1]

In political economics, the free market economy is simply the conceptual opposite of a command economy, where decisions regarding production, distribution, and pricing are a matter of governmental control. Or, in other words, “an economic system in which individuals, rather than government, make the majority of decisions regarding economic activities and transactions.”[2]

Neither of those apply now. Not to mention that many Bars are integrated into the government. When come back bring coherent argument.

[brickbacon]

@pravnik

And by the way, just so you don’t miss it, my response to your last post is on page 2, post 99.

Yes, I saw this when I first read the cite. It doesn’t change the point the author is making, and doesn’t really figure that much into the equation. Let’s go over them.

Your analogy would hold if the so-called $74,000 - $115,000 were wages. It is not. It is gross. It is not take home pay. A friend of my college student son’s initially took the same position you did - and then I asked him: "Suppose - for that $37.50 - $61.50.an hour, before you took home one cent for your family, you, from that gross income, after waiting four to six months after providing the services to be allowed to bill the Commonwealth, you first had to pay for:

1. Malpractice insurance, yourself.

I don’t really know how much malpractice insurance costs, but the cites I’ve seen place it around 5k. So taking the average hypothetical wage presented in the blog we have a salary of $94,500. Now we are at $89,500

2. Health insurance, 100% your self.

Maybe another 5k. Down to 85k.

3. Your fax, copier, printer, and all other equipment, 100% yourself.

All amortized costs that don’t really factor into wages in the long term.

4. Your licensing fees (the BBO fee this year is $350.00 - no reduction for those who take cases at below-market rates).

Not necessary in a free system.

5. Your internet costs (you must have internet to bill), 100% yourself.

6. Your phone, heat, light, cleaning, and every sheet of paper and printer/c opier/fax cartridges, 100%, yourself.

Internet=$300/year, Other Bills vary. Working from home, greatly reduces these costs. Let’s estimate them at 3k/year. Now we are down to around 80k.

7. Either pay your staff’s salary, benefits, into the unemployment security fund, health insurance, etc. 100% yourself - or have no staff and file every sheet of paper, answer every call, and do all maintenance (unbillable) and all billing (time unbillable) yourself - staff often nets more than court-appointed attorneys do.

You don’t need to hire anyone. Even if you do, let’s say that costs you 20k a year. You are still at $60,000. Not a prince, but not a pauper. Still plenty of people would take that deal. That’s also assuming you do all of this alone, there are ways to cut costs.

[brickbacon]

@Random

Maybe so. But as pravnik has shown, in demolishing your arguments, your hypothetical “smart, competent person” would:

a) make a whole lot less money than he thought he would; and

b) likely do a piss-poor job representing his clients, because of his demonstrated lack of ability in spotting practical and logical flaws in an argument

First, it wasn’t my hypothetical, and pravnik has doen nothing to undercut the point the author of the blog has made. Plenty of people would work 60k or 100k+, and do as good a job as the “real lawyers” are now.

[Random]

You’re quite a bit light on your cost estimates. Especially laughable are these assertions or estimates:

@brickbacon

All amortized costs that don’t really factor into wages in the long term.

---

Other Bills vary. Working from home, greatly reduces these costs. Let’s estimate them at 3k/year.

---

You don’t need to hire anyone. Even if you do, let’s say that costs you 20k a year.

By the way, speaking of professional ethics, aren’t you the guy who works at FedEx and deliberately damages packages?

[brickbacon]

@Random

You’re quite a bit light on your cost estimates. Especially laughable are these assertions or estimates:

By the way, speaking of professional ethics, aren’t you the guy who works at FedEx and deliberately damages packages?

No, jackass.

[Muffin]

@pravnik

How exactly is a free market going to regulate malpractice and ethical breaches?

By not having any regulation, there could not be any malpractice or ethical breaches because there would be no duty or standard to be breached.

What?

[Muffin]

A free market is the solution? A free market as in eliminate the state funded law schools and government backed loans to law students so as to put a further barrier against poor people entering the profession?

[Muffin]

Skip the formal education, directly enter the profession, and learn on the job – but who is paying for the mistakes made while learning the hard way? The unsuspecting client, of course, particularly since there would be no compensation fund.

[Muffin]

Some matters involving complex litigation require a highly educated and highly experienced lawyer. Other matters, such as many small claims matters, require little more than a sound mind and minimal experience. Most judicial and administrative systems set out which types of legal work should be restricted to lawyers, and which type of legal work should not be restricted to lawyers. Rather than considering throwing the baby out with the bath water in entirely deregulating the legal profession, one should consider the utillity of regulated paralegals in various types of legal work, one should consider the viability of streamling certain areas of litigation such as small claims or low end family law, and one should consider addressing financial barriers to access to higher education and law school.

[Muffin]

@brickbacon

Are you really this dense? Lower class people cannot get decent legal representation because they have no/little money, and you can’t get the vast majority of lawyers to work hard for little to no money. This is a very simple concept.

And no matter how may lawyers enter theprofession, be it regulated or not, I expect that there would still be very few who would base their careers on working for little or no money, for that would tend to drive them out of business. One does have to eat, after all.

[Muffin]

@Random

By the way, speaking of professional ethics, aren’t you the guy who works at FedEx and deliberately damages packages?

@brickbacon

No, jackass.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6414331&postcount=34

@brickbacon

But, people have to understand how stressful the job is, and how liberating it is kicking the shit out of a box.
. . . .
After shipping packages all day, it feels good to kick one really hard to see if it breaks.

Must be a different brickbacon.
If the legal profession were not regulated, the kicking about of clients’ cases would be much more difficult to mitigate. Compulsory miminum standards of competence, compulsory insurance, and compulsory contribution to a compensation fund make for a much safer environment for the client.