What are the literal terms of Rand Rover’s relevant responsibilities, anyway? I see a lot of claims about what they are or aren’t, but what are they, actually?
I’m prepared to admit the possibility that they were posted and I missed them.
Not wanting to wade through 13 pages to review, but have we established that Rand Rover has never done any pro bono work? Because if he has done any at all, even the slightest amount, aren’t we just wasting our time? Oh. Wait. We are wasting our time in any event.
Well, if it is in pursuit of the forlorn hope of changing a shuttered mind, yes, most assuredly. If it is, however, simply mockery and dersion of someone richly deserving. that’s just good clean fun. Builds character.
Noone is going to put a gun to his head to do pro bono work. He is just upset that people want to guilt him into meeting his professional responsibilities.
Well, it takes a real commitment and years of effort. A mere snotty attitude just isn’t going to get it. Have you any shreds of empathy or humanity lingering? If you came across a cold, wet puppy in the rain, looking up at you with sorrowful brown eyes, would you drop kick it across the street if somebody was willing to give you a nickel?
If you can’t say yes without a moments hesitation…you probably don’t have the stuff.
OK, tough guy. Let’s test your statutory interpretation skills. Please point out the exact words in that statute that impose a responsibility on a lawyer to do pro bono work.
Evidence, however tiny, of the existence of a conscience, however tiny. Cause for hope?
Adhering to your nu, “improved” analogy—and pretending for a moment that it’s any of your business to determine what’s “good for the child,” over the wishes of the parents who employed you—the time to voice such objections would’ve been at the moment it was made clear that it was expected of you. Instead of informing your employer, up front, “I will not do that, because I don’t think ice cream is good for the child” (or in your real-life example, because you don’t think it’s “good” for poor people to have legal representation), you instead passive-aggressively failed to live up to your expectations and prayed that nobody would notice.
That you would take the coward’s way out is hardly surprising— but now you’ve been given an opportunity to discover your missing balls and announce to your guilt-tripping employer, in no uncertain terms, that you don’t plan to do any pro bono work. (Instead of, you know, skulking off and whining about the unfairness of it all, on an anonymous message board.) It’ll all be on the table; they’ll know exactly what kind of person they’ve got working for them. Hell, you can even dress it up as a “principled stand” against… well, something… rather than the ugly and obvious truth: that you don’t want to spend a single minute doing something for others that you’re not directly compensated for.
And this is why I would not want Rand Rover do any part of work for me*, whether pro bono or not, court work or just tax code: because I can’t trust somebody with his twisted values and argumentation that his reasoning is in my best interest. If he reads law and comes to the conclusion that I as his client am not obliged to do x, because there’s no penalty to not doing x, and he then tells me this, I will get into trouble later when it turns out his reading was faulty, and I was obliged to do x anyway.
Yes, I know, I’m not even in the same continent as he is, so practically it’s unlikely.
Alternatively, given the standards defining “pro bono publico legal work” in Illinois, Randy could simply work on drafting and promoting proposed Federal and Illinois state legislation which would make it easier and more effective to be a Galtian businessman. That I would personally be opposed to such legislation does not mean that I cannot see it as something he can morally do, given what he has said herein, that would comply with expectations and fulfill his “aspirational” commitment and the intent of the Illinois bar/SSC rules.
Rand Rover: let’s discuss the range of representation zeal you can give to a client. I know you’re not a litigator, but presumably it’s still fair to say that you represent the interests of clients, yes?
Now, there undoubtedly exists bar, some minimum level of competency, below which your performance should not fall. Let’s call that spot X.
There’s also a spot at which a client would be able to successfully make a case against you for malpractice. Let’s call that spot Y.
I assume you don’t contend that X and Y are the same point – that is, you acknowledge that you may fail to deliver a minimum quality of service (X), but owing to the difficulties of proof in a malpractice case, not be liable for malpractice, because the plaintiff in the malpractice action would require more egregious malpractice (Y) to make his case. Yes?
Although it is obvious where I’m going, let’s stop there. Do you concur with what I’ve said so far in this post?
Here, I’ll even change the font of the phrases you missed the first time through. See the fourth word of the first sentence R E S P O N S I B I L I T Y – guess what – is means responsibility, you know responsibility as in “Please point out the exact words in that statute that impose a responsibility on a lawyer to do pro bono work.”