Women want us, men want to be us…
Alternatively, sitting in small offices reading tens of thousands of nine year old emails until the small hours of the morning is everyone’s dream career choice.
What system would you propose for real property transfers which would require fewer lawyers? (How about the system they use in Zimbabwe? Just show up with an AK-47 and the land is yours!)
And note that most title searches are done by title examiners, not lawyers.
How come you can buy a $200,000 car without a lawyer? But a $150,000 house-it will cost you at least $5000 for all the legal stuff. Just what i said: the property transfer system is hundreds of years old-it uses archaic language and obscure terminology
I’ll try to dig up a cite later, but I recall reading once that the perception that the U.S. has proportionally more lawyers than other countries is based in part on misunderstanding that in some countries “lawyer” is more narrowly defined than here.
I don’t know where you live, but when I bought a house, my lawyer’s fee was about $1000.
Anyway, what if you were buying a $200,000 car from a private seller and he wanted a provision in the contract that gave him the right to use the car now and then to drive to Church?
Of course you would say “no,” but a real property transaction is more complex. When you buy a house, it’s very common, for example, that a neighbor or a utility will have a right to use your land for some purpose. Such a right is called an “easement,” which is no doubt one of the hundreds of years old, archaic terms you are complaining about.
So what would you do? Eliminate easements? In that case, how will utilities run wire and pipes to peoples’ houses? What will you do about shared driveways? Landlocked parcels? etc. etc.
What exactly would you change about the current real property system so that it will require fewer lawyers?
When I bought my house the only fee that didn’t feel like a complete ripoff was the lawyer fee. Something like $250 (a few years ago).
We have a lot of lawyers because we all so like to debate what is fair (cite: the SDMB). When it gets serious we call in the professionals. As someone else noted, using a lawyer is better than using an AK47.
Plus the fact that lawyers always work with, or are, hot chicks and they just sit around and talk all day except when they are grilling a hostile witness. Any number of cites here: Susan Dey for example. So who wouldn’t want to be one?
Like pollution, Lawyers are an inevitable and undesirable byproduct of civilization.
Please excuse the hijack, but this intriquies me, ralph. What nations do you think have a modern real estate transfer system? How do those nations protect against title defects?
The US is by far the most litigious, sue-happy country on the planet. This drives an entire insurance industry and breeds a culture of “not-my-fault”. The rest of the world seems to take on more personal responsibility and if one trips over a sidewalk, most non-Americans are not going to be calling a lawyer.
Outside of the personal injury lawyers, America still has far more per capita, but it is slightly more reasonable.
We keep feeding them.
What about the fact that the vast majority of lawyers have nothing at all to do with real estate transactions?
There was a very small window in my life where I briefly toyed with the idea of becoming a lawyer. You nailed the reason why I didn’t.
The thought of studying for the rest of my life, reading boring legal briefs forever - gee, how fun!
Oddly, despite that early epiphany, I have spent many years working with lawyers…and everything I ever envisioned was even worse in real life.
Any truth to the rumor that most lawyers went into the field after seeing either To Kill A Mockingbird or watched episodes of LA Law?
And getting them wet.
Also, you have an extremely complicated and, how to put this… “un-clean-cut” legal system. It’s not just the law, but the many laws plus judicial decisions.
In Spain any new law has to indicate how it relates to other laws about the same subject. Does it supersede them or append to them? If it’s a country-level law, can regional governments create other laws modifying it? And if judges say a law is unclear, it needs to be amended and clarified; once the new version is published, there is no need to refer to the judicial decision.
IANAL, but I know that just by grabbing the Ley General de la Seguridad Social, Ley General de Prevención de Riesgos Laborales and Estatuto General de los Trabajadores I’ve got 90% of Spanish Labor Laws in my hand (that’s only 3 laws): how many do you need in the US?
Not for me personally. I love “To Kill a Mockingbird,” but it played no part in my decision to study law, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen an entire episode of “LA Law.” I loved Harry Hamlin in “Clash of the Titans,” though.
Most of the laws in the US, if federal, are codified and through a very complex library process which lawyers will find eventually (if the court’s clerk doesn’t find it first). The problem I have with civil law jurisdictions – admittedly though, I never practiced in one – is that it seems so inflexible, that code writers have accounted for all applications of the law they write. The trials seem to put too much power in the hands of one judge, rather than a zealous competitive process between two opposing parties.
Cite? Every piece of real estate that everyone I know has bought has involved a lawyer. Part of my job is reviewing land use agreements, commercial zoning, tower and rooftop leases. I don’t even want to get into traditional property law.
To the OP, you want as many lawyers as possible, both to handle the various amounts of litigation and to better define the law. More lawyers in the market will lower the price of fees. I travel a lot internationally, and everywhere I go, when people ask what I do, they seemed surprised and awed that I am a lawyer, and even more so that I am an American lawyer (either that or it’s surprise and awe in a "they let you become a lawyer? 
)
A JD also requires fewer years of schooling than an MD or a PhD.
So? Every sexual harassment suit requires the services of someone skilled in that area. Etc., etc. etc. That doesn’t mean that they make up the majority of attorneys.
I’m asking for a cite because it goes against what I perceive from daily work routines and the house buying experience of everyone I know. I know no one who has bought a house without an attorney. Therefore, with this experience, I think it’s logical to assume that an attorney be involved? Is there a cite for this claim? It’s like saying that not every doctor’s visit or visit to a hospital involves a doctor. But, I bet at the end of the day there is at least a doctor with oversight responsibility, much like an attorney will be involved once a sexual harassment claim progresses beyond a warning.