You know, Starving, given the broad brush you are using, the leaps of logic you are employing, the tendency to use selective quotes from my posts to, by innuendo, claim positions I have not advanced and your apparent aversion to the propositions that every criminal defendant is entitled to a vigorous defense and that no one is guilty of any thing until found so upon proper trial , I question whether any amount of argument will dissuade you of you conception that lawyers are fundamentally dishonest people.
In particular you have focused on two of the points I tried to make, that lying to judges and to clients is a serious, maybe fatal, misstep in any lawyer’s career. That is not because lying to anybody else is admirable, necessary or condoned. It is because it is all too easy to lie to judges and clients It is usually done in an attempt to defer dealing with the lawyer’s own screw ups until a later day. If you ask me a question about, for instance, whether I have authority to do something, or whether I have done something, I have no obligation to answer you at all. If a judge asks me, if a client (a person who has entrusted matters concerning their liberty or treasure to my management) asks me, I do have an obligation to give a straight answer. If I say that I have authority or that I have done a thing when I have no authority or I have not done a thing, I have violated that trust. It is the very heart of a lawyer’s duty to uphold that trust. If I fail that duty I have no business in the lawyer business and I expose myself to the very real possibility that when the truth comes out, as it surely will, I will lose my license to practice.
On a personal level, I have been a lawyer for almost precisely 37 years. In that time no one has suggested that I am in any respect dishonest or that I make my living by professionally lying. Your throw away line, friend Starving, I do take personally. This is not the sort of thing that can be passed off as a feeble attempt to be witty. I take it as a personal affront and as an attack on a profession I have loved. My most valuable asset is my reputation. Every cheap shot such as yours that goes unanswered chips away at my reputation as well as the standing of my profession. It is not the sort of thing that I will suffer gracefully. Lawyer bashing may make profitable entertainment and successful politics but it is simply defamation and gives rise to hard feelings.
I’m a lawyer. The single most important tenent in my life is integrity. Of anything that could be taken from me, my good name is what would bother me the most. I do not lie in my profession, I do not lie in my personal life and I resent the hell out of people who know nothing of the practice of law except what they see on TV telling me that I must be liar to be in my profession.
I do negotiate in my profession. This means that I don’t always share everything I know with the other side. For example, I may know that the employee would settle for 6 months of back pay, even though he has been out of work for 9 months. Just because I don’t tell this to the opposing attorney when we begin to negotiate does not mean that I am lying. I tell opposing counsel if my client has recieved unemployment benefits or has had another job, which will reduce the amount of backpay the client will get, because if I didn’t, it would be dishonest.
If I were a defense attorney, my client might tell me that he was guilty. I would advise him to plead guilty and bargain over the sentence. If he did not, I would do my job, which is to make sure that the State does its job and presents evidence to convict the client. I would insure, to the best of my ability, that the evidence was gathered and presented according to the law, and I would challenge any evidence that did not meet this standard. I would present witnesses to honestly call into question evidence brought forward by the State. To do otherwise would be dishonest in my representation of my client, and to the laws and traditions of this country. If the State could not present enough evidence for reasonable jurors (or the judge) to convict, it would not be not my fault, nor would I have done anything dishonest. Unless we want a system where evidence can be manufatured to convict whomever, we must have independent defense lawyers, and the State must carry the burden of proving guilt. Yes, sometimes the guilty go free, but I honestly believe protecting the innocent is a worthy goal, and until someone convinces me that another system can do that, I will defend our system.
In civil cases, guilt and innocence don’t play a role, but there is still a burden of proof, and both sides need to participate in the process if there is going to be any trace of justice. Again, this system does not always work, but it has its place in our society. Perhaps if the law was more revered and honored, there would be less attempts to manipulate it.
I am very proud to be an attorney. It is an honorable and vital profession, one that adds to the quality of life of our country, and provides a model for the world. I deserve your respect, and more importantly, I have the respect of the people I work with (on both sides), and those who know me.
This is exactly why I’ve resisted pointing out specific things about specific lawyers. It would do no good. If I were to list 100 things you’d still say it was a miniscule amount and not indicative of the norm.
Are you even reading the posts my comments respond to? I don’t believe you could suggest such silly things if you were. My comments relate to the posts they answered, not your ridiculous interpretation of them.
Really, you are losing perspective. Where did I say I would vote for a Republican lawyer anyway?
Are you speaking of my comments or your own? All I said in regard to Republican presidents is that I doubt I’d ever hear one say anything like “I didn’t have sex with her, she had sex with me.”
Well, Spavined (may I call you Spavined?), it does appear we have a major disconnect here. May I ask what leaps of logic? What selective quotes, as opposed to germane ones? What innuendo? I asked you to correct me if my interpretation of what you were saying was wrong. What positions have I claimed you advanced that you haven’t? Where have I indicated an aversion to a vigorous (but honest) defense…and where have I indicated that I disapprove of the concept that a person is innocent until proven guilty?
And finally, where have I indicated a conception that lawyers themselves are fundamentally dishonest? To engage in occasional dishonest behavior in the course of one’s job does not necessarily make one a fundamentally dishonest person.
If I may be so bold as to say so, I believe you are so caught up in defending what is obviously a very sore spot with you that you’re seeing things I never said or implied and that you’re attributing to me beliefs I don’t actually hold.
Pardon me, but this really isn’t so. I focused on the fact that you seemed to be very specific about who you wouldn’t lie to. This seems to imply that lying to anyone else would be permissable if it was to your advantage to do so. I asked KSO (and I’m still waiting for an answer) why instead of listing the people he would not lie to, he didn’t just say he never lied to anyone in the course of his job. I would ask you the same thing. Have you ever, in the course of performing your job, lied or misled anyone in such a way as to be the equivalent of a lie? If you haven’t, why not just say so instead of listing judges, clients, etc.? If you have, then my point is valid and I don’t see what we’re arguing about.
Again, even I would not say you make your living by professionally lying. I’m saying that in the course of their profession, most lawyers are obliged to lie.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about here. Was it the “shut up about it” comment? If so, it was not an attempt to be witty, it just seemed to me that’s what you were saying. In other words, you seemed to be saying this is the way the law works, you (I) don’t understand the nature of the adversarial relationship, we’re the only ones who care about your civil liberties, and how dare you criticise the way we do business as it can’t be helped and it’s for your own good.
I also asked you to correct me if I were wrong. I would be happy to listen if you want to explain to me how I was wrong in that interpretation, instead of just dismissing it as an attempt on my part to be funny.
With all due respect, and I mean that sincerely, it has not been my intention here to engage in “lawyer bashing.” My intention was to warn the OP that if scrupulous honesty was an issue with him, he would probably not be successful as a lawyer. That’s all.
And as far as my comments chipping away at your reputation and the standing of your profession (and I’m going to use well-known examples here for the sake of expediency), the behavior of David Westerfield’s attorneys that I linked to above does your profession much more harm than I ever could. And the fact that so many defense attorneys rushed to his defense, and the fact that the California bar refused to punish them for their patently dishonest and reprehensible behavior, damages the reputation of your profession even more.
And every time a Mark Garagos or Robert Shapiro comes on television the day after they’ve been hired and state flatly as a matter of fact that their client is innocent, it damages the reputation of your profession. As a matter of fact, this is one of the types of lying I’m referring to. There is no way, even if their client truly was innocent, that they could know it the day after they’re hired. No, they are playing the defendant’s advocate, and part of that advocation is to claim things as fact that they have no way of knowing to actually be a fact…and we all know it! It would be one thing to say “let’s wait till all the evidence is in,” or “I have no reason at this point to think my client is guilty of the crimes he has been charged with,” or “he has stated to me that he is innocent and I’m sure the facts will all come out in the trial.” But no…they come on and flat-out lie about something they couldn’t possibly know for a fact, and state it as such. And then we have Leslie Abrahamson, and her fawning sympathy for her client, patting him consolingly and putting her arm around him in front of the jury in a deliberate attempt to sway the jury by her apparent belief in his innocence and that he is having to go through such a terrible ordeal…all of which is complete bullshit and we all know it! If you want to complain about the public’s perception of lawyers, complain to them. And I’m not blaming just defense attorneys, either. The exact same type of behavior goes on with the prosecution, as well.
Now, having said that, I’m sure you will have all sorts of explanations as to why this type of thing is necessary and/or even desirable. And in the context of practicing law, you may very well be right. But to me, it’s dishonest and I would not want to be a lawyer if I would have to do such things, hence my post to the OP.
Pardon me for editing out most of your post. You have said you never lie, and if that is so in the way that I think of lying, you do indeed have my respect. Remember though, I was not criticising any specific person and I was not criticising you. I was criticising the type of dishonesty I see all over the place with lawyers on television, with lawyers my friends and family have come into contact with, and with those I’ve seen in a courtroom.
Just recently, I accompanied my aunt to court regarding a small claims matter she had brought. While we were awaiting her turn in front of the judge, we witnessed an action brought by a bus passenger who had been slightly injured in a collision the bus he was riding in had with an elderly lady unexpectedly backing out of her driveway. The bus company’s lawyer was so syrupy sweet to the old lady and the bus driver, and so contemptuous and accusatory toward the injured man that it was making my aunt and me angry just watching it. This in itself wasn’t dishonest though.
However, this guy pulled every trick in the book to try to confuse the injured person, trip him up on his previous statements, etc. One tactic he used to try to do this was in regard to the fact that there were actually two impacts that took place: the impact of the bus hitting the old woman’s car, and the impact of the injured man as he was thrown from his seat and into another seat and then the floor of the bus. He would ask the injured passenger about some remark he had previously made regarding the impact, and then accuse him of lying or making it up because the passenger hadn’t said that in his pre-trial paperwork. Well, of course he had, but it was in relation to the impact of his hitting the floor, not of the bus hitting the car which is what this attorney was trying to use to confuse him and make him appear dishonest. The passenger was a soft-spoken middle-aged man, and if he hadn’t had his own attorney, this guy would have run all over him…and in a dishonest way!
Now, I’m sure almost all attorneys would say he was just doing his job and it was the job of the other attorney to catch what he was doing and defend his client from it. But to me, this is just flat-out dishonest. I wouldn’t do it, and if the OP wouldn’t be comfortable doing it, I wouldn’t imagine he would be a very successful attorney because he wouldn’t be able to compete with those who do…and which one do you think the bus company would want to hire?
I hope you see my point now. But in closing, if you don’t lie in the course of your job, you have no reason to feel a lack of respect from me. If anything, I respect you even that much more. But I would still feel you are more the exception than the rule.
I was going to ask you to stop being coy and actually explain what you mean when you say that most lawyers must lie. Then I read what you said below.
If that is what you consider lying, then there is no common ground to discuss anything. I would suggest that a dictionary definition of “lie”, and I think most people’s definition, when they are not trying to be incendiary, involves an intent to deceive. There is a huge, fundamental difference between stating your view on something that is uncertain or unclear and being an advocate, and lying. If your situation above is one that you deem “lying”, then I’m afraid pretty much every profession on the planet involves lying.
If you are claiming that Shapiro, etc. had certain proof that a client was guilty, but said that they were innocent, please present your proof.
Incidentally, I do not know what republican or democratic political candidates have to do with any of this. Is there a Godwin’s law on this folder for right-wing/left-wing discussion?
I see. So the lies I’m talking about aren’t meant to decieve. What, pray tell, is the reason for them then?
Stating something as a flat-out fact, i.e. “My client is innocent” is not the same thing as stating a “view” about something that is unclear or unproven, i.e. “I’ve seen nothing thus far to indicate my client is guilty” or “My client has told me he’s innocent and I’ve seen nothing to indicate otherwise” (assuming that is true, of course).
Oh, I wouldn’t say that. I don’t believe my doctor lies to me; I don’t believe my wedding photograper lies to me; I don’t believe my tax man lies to me; etc.
Please. That isn’t what I said at all. I said that at the time he stated flatly and unequivocally that Simpson was innocent, he had no way of knowing if that was so…and therefore he was being dishonest in stating as a fact something that he didn’t know to be a fact.
I don’t either. You’ll have to take that up with Gamaliel. He/she was the one to introduce presidential voting into this thread.
[QUOTE=Starving Artist]
Nope. And I doubt that I would./QUOTE]
I guess when you say you wouldn’t vote against someone that doesn’t necessarily mean you would vote for them. Who’s constructing their sentences like a lawyer now? :rolleyes:
Starving Artist, a simple question: What is it about practising law that, in your opinion, requires dishonesty?
I’m a law clerk, and I’ve never lied to my clients or the court in the course of my job. In fact, I have never lied to anyone in the course of my job, but I state the duties to my client and the court first because these are the most important ones.
Possibly to advocate on behalf of your client; to state his position?
Sure, that’s the way the world normally operates. No one ever states a position on something based on the facts as they know them, they always say, “I’ve seen nothing so far to indicate that your money isn’t still in our bank,” or “Although we cannot ever guarantee such things, I have no reason but to believe that the repairs we performed on your car fixed it.”
Your argument has simply become a farce; you did in fact want to get out your cute point that most attorneys “lie”; and to do it, you’ve made up your own definition of “lie”.
Well, they all do everytime you see them by your definition. My doctor told me I was in good health on my last visit; he doesn’t know that for fact. My wedding photographer told me my pictures would be at my house in one week, when in fact there was a problem with my mail which made them late; why would she say they would be there when it could not be factually proven! My tax man said I would be entitled to a $1,000 refund, when in fact, one of my deductions was disallowed and it was only $750. That lying bastard! How can these people work in a profession in which most of them are liers?
No, he was stating his position. He would have been dishonest (and lying) had he known his client was guilty. Lying requires an intent to deceive. If I give my view on something, it doesn’t make it a lie if it turns out to be wrong, or if I am not factually 100% certain that it is the case. No one on this earth says you have to stick a, “I believe . . .” before every statement other than those for which God himself has given you omniscient proof.
All you want is to hold one groups statements to a higher standard than everyone else. That is dishonest, and your pretence at not understanding is hollow. You are the one that is lying, in an attempt to prove a not-so-clever point.
Then stop it Gamaliel; start your own politics thread. This isn’t the place.
Lawyers lie to advocate on behalf of their client? Thank you for making my point.
Well, I must say this speaks volumes for the circles you travel in.
Stating something as a fact that you know is not a fact is a lie in the book of most of the people I know, particularly if it’s done as a strategy toward an end. (And I would point out this is only one of the many forms that lawyerly dishonesty can take…but I’m sure you already know this.)
And you have the nerve to say my position is a farce?
No he wasn’t. He was claiming a false fact!
And he would also be lying if he stated unequivocally that his client was innocent without knowing that to be the case.
Precisely!
That’s right, if you’re giving your view and not stating a fact.
Look…let’s cut to the chase. Lawyers say their client is innocent without knowing if he is or not, and they have specific strategic reasons for doing so. You know, and I know, that to be totally honest would be self-defeating. Doing this kind of thing is a standard (and as you show with every word out of your mouth) and accepted way of doing business. It is only one of the ways in which lawyers are required to be dishonest in the performance of their duties. To someone who is scrupulously honest, this would be objectionable. To someone who isn’t, it appears naive and silly. If the OP is by nature a scrupulously honest person, he will not be happy as a lawyer in my opinion. If, on the other hand, he is of your ilk, it will not bother him.
Bullshit! To use your own silly example of a doctor, what lawyers do would be analagous to your doctor walking in and declaring you to be completely fit and in good health before he even examined you. And of course, they don’t do that, do they?
Well, I’ve now given lots of examples of lawyerly dishonesty. How’s about you address one of them instead of these silly attempts at rationalization? What about Westerfield’s attorneys? What about the other lawyers who defended them? What about the California bar that refused to take action against them? What about the bus company lawyer I referenced? What about Mark Garagos stating flatly that Petersen was innocent, and that he was not only going to prove it, he was going to prove who did do it? (I bet not even you believe this. And he wasn’t stating his “view,” he was stating what he hoped would be regarded as fact. Deny it all you want, it won’t change the facts.)
I am not a lawyer. However, I am in the third year of a law degree and, all things going according to plan, I should be admitted as a solicitor in about three years’ time. If there’s one thing I’ve realised clearly in my studies so far, it’s that the correct *legal * outcome in many situations can differ significantly from what one would expect to be the *just/ethical/moral * outcome. I’d think that anyone who has trouble accepting this legal/moral dichotomy would find it difficult to become a successful lawyer.
Under the law, everyone is innocent until proven guilty.
To the OP - you need a thick skin to put up with people with attitudes like those of Starving Artist, Random Letters, and Shirley Ujest. There is a saying though: “everyone hates lawyers until they need one.” [There is also a saying that: “all sweeping generalizations are false (including this one).”]
Starving Artist’s argument is based on a stereotype: “all lawyers are liars.” He heard some things he thought were unfair, but he does not actually know anything about the law and has not had any personal bad experiences himself. (I am assuming Starving Artist is male.) He has merely extrapolated what he has heard from others and seen on tv to reinforce a stereotype. From his perspective, we can then assume, for example, since we have all heard things, that all artists are starving, all doctors are butchers, all salespeople are rip off artists, all plumbers show the crack of their ass, all people in the computer field are geeks, all day care workers molest children, all priests are child molesters as well . . . you get my drift.
Rest assured, **Skully ** - attorneys are held to the highest standards of professional responsibility. For Starving Artist’s sake, I hope he never tries to adopt a child, buy real estate, need a valid will, or get arrested - because a lawyer will be able to protect his rights far better than he can himself. And without lying.
I should add that I’m not intending to impugn the honesty and integrity of lawyers, either individually or as a class. I’m merely stating that law and justice are not always the same thing and that any budding lawyer/solictor/barrister/advocate/attorney should be aware of this before entering the legal profession.
If a lawyer knows that his client has committed a crime, and tells the court the opposite, he has committed a fraud upon the court. If a lawyer knowingly advises his client to lie to the court, he is as guilty (of perjury)mas his client. If a lawyer KNOWINGLY conceals evidence which would tend to prove his client guilty, he is guilty of all three.
So, exactly WHAT is the defense counsel (of a guilty defendent) supposed to do?
He is expected to deliver a defense based upon the best tools he has, this includes:
-attacking the veracity of witnesses
-attacking the veracity of the arresting authorities
-casting doubt about the methods of evidence collection, etc.
It DOES NOT INCLUDE:
-making up totally ridiculous theories of who MAY have committed the crime (ala Geragos with his “satanists killed Luci theories”)
-personal attacks upon the parties called to give testimony
I find it hard to accept the performance of a guy like Geragos, because he HAS lied in the past (in the Winona Ryder case).Similarly, I can’t accept Cochran and Shapiro, because of the vicious personal attacks they made upon Mark Furman.
If my client perjures himself, I am obliged to remove myself from the case. My responsibilities as an officer of the court require that I not participate in misleading the court.
Ah-hah. You’ve been to court and watched television, so now you can tell me how I do my job? In the real world, dishonesty is not the stock and trade of a lawyer; it is unethical conduct and it gets you disbarred.