Here we go again: trying to turn an actual RULE into some moral bullshit.
The problem in your case is you are unable to distinguish the act from the person and you end up hating the person. (I do the same thing many times and have to stop myself)
Like hating RR for making you look bad by not doing pro bono, hating me for disagreeing.
I’m saying we should stop hating altogether and let others be.
Blalron, you seem to have missed the exact issue I’m arguing. I’m only arguing that I have no actual obligation to do pro bono. I’m not arguing abot whether doing pro bono is a good thing or whether it would make me feel good to do pro bono. So, if I changed my mind on those issues, I wouldn’t be changing my mind about something I argued about for 1500 posts.
Just because you say something, doesn’t make it true.
Except I don’t hate you. I hold you in contempt. And it isn’t for disagreeing. It is for calling me a liar, and for being a jumped-up, pompous, self-important tool who isn’t one tenth as smart as he or she thinks he is.
Lucky me. Then how about not hold anyone in contempt either, even if they are a jumped-up, pompous, self-important tool like me.
I think harboring contempt for others is much worse than the indifferent attitude that you claim to be fighting. (I don’t think you are a liar, just angry because I diagree)
I hold in contempt that which deserves contempt.
When you deny I can do a good job at something I do not want to do, after I assert I can (and this is something I have done repeatedly) you are accusing me of lying, rather than disagreeing with me.
See this is why I have doubts about you being a lawyer.
I didn’t deny you can do a good job when you “hate it with every fabric of your being”. I said I seriously doubt it.
Sparky, I’d have a jury knowing they had personally heard you calling me a liar, and awarding me your next 40 years of pay checks as defamation damages.
I’d then go out and buy a DVD, and invest the $3.99 I had left over from the award.
(For the humor impaired, the above is not meant to be taken seriously)
It’s always amusing when people want someone ELSE to work without compensation.
For the greater good, of course.:smack:
If only someone had thought of saying that in the past 32 pages. I bow to your wisdom, oh superior objectivist one.
Except that it’s the paying clients who are compensating you for your work for nonpaying clients. Wanting to avoid pro bono is wanting to get paid for not working.
Watch out Morgan Stanley.
Dude, you are just making yourself look worse with your posturing and mockery.
At the risk of making this thread repetitive (:p) I’d like to point out that lawyers, in exchange for the privilege of having a monopoly on the right to practice law (thus undercutting other potential competitors which keep the price of their labor artificially high and inaccessible to many people), have agreed to implement a non-binding guideline that lawyers work for free 50 hours a year. In Rand Rover’s case, he’s being asked to do less than half of that.
Assuming a standard 40 hour work week and two weeks vacation a year (2000 work hours), RR is being asked donate one percent of his time. And keep in mind, that Rand Rover (if he is to be believed) is filthy rich and lacks nothing materially in this world.
“Help! Help! I’m being oppressed! Look at the violence inherent in the system!” :dubious:
Or, as Redpill thinks of it, it’s Cuban-style Communism.
There are degrees. Forcing someone to work for free for others goes in that direction.
… while restricting a useful degree of access to the legal system to those who can pay someone enjoying membership in a guild with a legal monopoly on it is what?
Assuming you are right, that is a shortcoming in the legal system but coercing pro bono out of lawyers is not the answer.
It makes it even worse.
I think the point you are missing is who Rand Rover is being asked by. He is being asked by his employer to volunteer 50 hours of his time. The employer is not compensating him in any way for his time volunteering (no extra pay or vacation time) and yet he is expected to volunteer his time because his employer would like him to. Nobody sees the problem with this?
Assuming a standard 40 hour work week and two weeks vacation a year (2000 work hours), RR is being asked donate 6.25 days (out of 10 total days) of his vacation time to volunteer. Does that seem fair?
As other attorneys in this thread have mentioned, when they worked at firms which promoted pro bono work, they billed it as pro bono and it was done on the law firm’s time.
It seems like the reason why this is somehow justified is because Rand Rover happens to be a lawyer. Ironically, if he was in almost any other profession, Dopers would probably advise him to get a lawyer.
I’m certain that government subsidies for legal aid would be far more effective than a non-binding guideline and a toothless clause about “responsibility.” But that’s not really the point of this thread. The point is that Rand Rover, knowing full well how the system is set up, nonetheless promised to do something that he has no intention of ever doing. He is a liar, whose pants are on fire, and he appears to have no sense of honor whatsoever. He doesn’t even have the honor to admit to being a liar, as his hundreds of posts show where he’s trying to weasel out of this by defining away the word “responsibility” to mean something completely different than any known dictionary says it means.
Actually, earlier in the thread it was discovered that his company does bill him for pro bono time; it comes out of their pockets, not his. Try again.
Besides, saying that a lawyer’s pro bono time cuts into their per hour salary makes about as much sense as saying that a teacher shouldn’t have to work over the summer or at night after school hours because they only get paid for 9 months and that extra time cuts into their per hour. They’re expected to do that work if they want to be any good at their job, just as a lawyer is expected to do pro bono. It’s figured into the benefits of the title from the start.