Should Lawyer's Incomes Be Capped?

[pravnik]

@msmith537

Now if you will excuse me, I have to take a shit in my solid gold toilet.

For the last time, I want my tuba back!

[Captain_Amazing]

@whole_bean

In order to sit for this exam, you have to be a graduate of an accredited law school.

Just to nitpick, in Virginia and California, and maybe one or two other places, you can still read for the bar.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

Cross-posted from Sateryn’s IMHO poll:

I voted “No, but what if it’s not okay,” etc., but it would depend largely on the specific situation. For a will? Probably. For a bankruptcy? Probably not. Would also depend on the jurisdiction.

It’s an oft-repeated maxim that every experienced paralegal thinks they can do their bosses’ job, and that includes me. Is it true? Probably not in most cases.

Probably including mine… although I know some truly incompetent lawyers who graduated law school cum laude and even one who was editor of the school’s review journal. I’m talking about people who are barely literate, though probably quite intelligent. I’ve never been able to figure out how the passed the bar exam.

Here are the requirements to take the CA bar if you attended a nonaccredited school. What gives - does California just need a whole bunch of lawyers with dubious qualifications?

[Malthus]

To the original OP - I’m a lawyer, working as a regulatory consultant to the pharma industry. What one should understand is that while compared with most folks lawyers make big bucks, compared with management of major corporations lawyers make peanuts. Capping lawyers’ salary would create a whole set of perverse incentives in the business world - unless you capped the salaries of everyone else who works in industry. If a business is willing to pay my rates for advice, why shouldn’t I get paid? They are under no obligation to pay for my services, if they don’t think that the services are worth the money; as sophisticated financial players, they demand value for their money.

As for paralegals and the like - no doubt someone with comparable experience and lacking the qualifications and guild membership of being called to the bar could do my job. The problem is, how would any such person get the relevant experience? In order to be actually worth money, I’d say that someone doing my job has to have about 3-4 years of relevant work experience - that is, apprenticeship with a person working in the industry and within the court system. A consultant lacking a law degree (and there are many non-lawyer regulatory consultants) simply does not do the same sort of work as I and will never get the same kind of experience (I cannot speak for all forms of lawyering of course!).

What do I mean by relevant experience? I can only speak of my own subset of the industry. As I said, I do regulatory work. What this means is that clients often come to me with their business plans and ask me to do three things: spot the potential regulatory and litigation-risk issues with their plans; to the extent possible, suggest ways to minimize these risks; and advise them of the likely risk-reward ratio for these various plans.

The first of these things is the easiest to do (although even that is not always as easy as it looks). I don’t work in-house, but as an outside consultant, so often the plans at issue are those that the local in-house counsel has decided are to complex for him or her. However, I can understand someone saying that ‘anyone reasonably intelligent can read the regulations and form an opinion of the legality of various plans’ (even though I think this most unwise).

The problem lies in the latter two points: suggesting reasonable methods for dealing with risks, and offering useful advice of the actual risks at issue. This requires the years of experience I was discussing, of knowledge within the industry and also of the action in the courts and administrative bodies. Companies require useful and practical advice. They need to know whether restrictions found in regulations, polices or guidelines put out by the federal government, the provinces, quasi-governmental regulatory bodies, industry associations and the like are policed rigourously, open to negotiation in special cases, or totally ignored by everyone; what changes are expected in the regulatory climate; the latest trends in class-action litigation and the like …

It is having a feel for this stuff - the twin worlds of industry and the litigation system - which is valuable. The law degree and bar call is a necessity to get access to these worlds of experience.

[Kimmy_Gibbler]

[Cross-posted]

Maybe it is more pertinent here anyway. All the same, I’d like to here both the regulators’ (like the OP) and the deregulators’ (like Sateryn76) reaction to it.

@Kimmy_Gibbler

I wonder if you think, economically, this is a very tenable system. Why would paralegals charge so little when the market-clearing rate is apparently much higher? Would attorneys stay in the “simple bankruptcy” game if paralegals were capturing all that business with their bargain-basement prices? And if not, as they probably would not, where would future “simple bankruptcy” paralegals come from? After all, they couldn’t come from the firms, since the firms no longer have that practice area.

You seem to base your notion of the origin of attorneys’ fees on the long discredited “labor theory of value”—namely, that prices are set by summing up the cost of the factors of production (in this case, law school tuition). They are not. Prices are determined by the interplay of supply and demand; if the market-clearing rate for simple bankruptcies were not high enough to allow the practitioner to recoup the cost of her education, she would go into a different practice area or leave the practice of law altogether. Over time, supply would contract and those left in simple bankruptcy (i.e., those whose comparative advantage lies in that practice area) would be able to change an equilibrium fee (one that balances their revenue with their costs).

There is nothing monopolistic about a regulated bar. There are perhaps more firms in law than in almost any other profession; accordingly it’s about as good a model of competition as you’ll ever see.

Kimmy_Gibbler, Esq.

[Gadarene]

@pravnik

For the last time, I want my tuba back!

Awesome.

[msmith537]

@Saintly_Loser

Yes, this. Very much so. I am not a lawyer. Nonetheless, I know a lot more about the law than most non-lawyers. I grew up around lawyers and judges. I’ve worked in law firms most of my adult life. Many of my friends are lawyers or judges.

As I said, I know more about the law than most laypeople. What that means is that I know enough to know I don’t know a thing.

Which means you probably know enough to pass yourself off as a lawyer if you wanted to. IOW, just enough to be dangerous.

[Saintly_Loser]

@msmith537

Which means you probably know enough to pass yourself off as a lawyer if you wanted to. IOW, just enough to be dangerous.

Perhaps. Briefly. Maybe enough to scam somone into thinking I’m a lawyer. Definitely not enough to achieve results for a client. Yes, enough to be dangerous.

But I’m not dangerous, because I know this. It’s those who are convinced that they can practice law just as well as the real lawyers who are dangerous.

[Bricker]

@Sateryn76

Would you approve of a system that I described in an earlier post:

“Would you have less of a problem if there was a “bar” for paralegals? Maybe a brief exam for each area of case law that is “commodity law” - say, easy divorce, BK, real estate paperwork, wills, powers of attorney, corporate paperwork, those types of things. If passed, that person would be “board certified” to practice in a limited area.”

And it would include a disciplinary component?

If it also included mandatory malpractice insurance, I could probably get on board with such a system, in general.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

Of course, it’d be pretty damn hard to pay for malpractice insurance while charging paralegal rates.

[whole_bean]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

Of course, it’d be pretty damn hard to pay for malpractice insurance while charging paralegal rates.

Having always worked for a firm, I’ve never looked into this as I was covered by the firm’s policy. Are lawyers required to carry malpractice insurance?

[villa]

@whole_bean

Having always worked for a firm, I’ve never looked into this as I was covered by the firm’s policy. Are lawyers required to carry malpractice insurance?

I depends on the state. I believe the Virginia bar does not require malpractice insurance, but I must inform them if I am not covered.

[lurking_guest]

NO!

Lawyers incomes should NOT be capped.

Neither should Doctors…

Nor the liability on their mistakes.

“Free-market Capitalism” - right?

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@whole_bean

Having always worked for a firm, I’ve never looked into this as I was covered by the firm’s policy. Are lawyers required to carry malpractice insurance?

Not in Florida, although if you do insurance defense you won’t get any clients if you don’t.

[gonzomax]

Everybody in the country should make minimum wage except financial executives and bankers.

[NicePete]

@Sateryn76

Right - but the difference is law school costs $150,000. Why so expensive for something that can be done without it?

The people that you obtained your legal knowledge from didn’t do without it.

[Richie_Incognito]

I just don’t understand this, “why can’t paralegals practice law argument?” Many jobs in this country require degrees. Some jobs even require advanced degrees. Some require licenses. That’s just the way it is.

How is this argument any different from a “why can’t operating room nurses be surgeons” or “why can’t an experienced teacher’s aid be a teacher?”

Do I think there is anything so special about the skills of a lawyer vs. a paralegal working in the same field and doing similar things? No. The difference is the lawyer obtained a license to practice law and the paralegal did not. Welcome to how the system works.

When the lawyer went to school, he/she went to school to practice law. When the paralegal went to school, he/she went to school to aid and assist an attorney.

[Caffeine.addict]

How much of the lawyer’s fee of $1,200.00 for a matter covers things like malpractice insurance, office rent, and overhead. How will the paralegal be able to avoid having to pay those items and still be able to charge $300.00? Sateryn76, are you saying that the attorney is signing pleadings without reading them? :eek: I can see delegating putting things together, but the attorney needs to be reading pleadings before signing them otherwise he is in serious violation of his duties as an officer of the court and his ethical duties to his clients.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

That.

[msmith537]

@Saintly_Loser

Perhaps. Briefly. Maybe enough to scam somone into thinking I’m a lawyer. Definitely not enough to achieve results for a client. Yes, enough to be dangerous.

But I’m not dangerous, because I know this. It’s those who are convinced that they can practice law just as well as the real lawyers who are dangerous.

But that’s why we have a bar exam. Sure there are incompetant lawyers, but at least they have a certification from an independent regulatory board that they have completed the minimum requirements.