Wildest Bill - Pick a stance, any stance!

The BBQ Pit
21

Andros no offense but the way you are posting is annoying as all get out. Why do you use little statements without finishing it. It is a waste of time! Man, this internet thing doesn’t work that great sometimes and it takes forever sometimes for it to load things or switch screens or whatever. Sorry I didn’t mean to flame on you on the thread that is suppose to be flaming on me but get to the point dude and say what you are going to say.

You see now I got to waste more time by saying “what is not factual about that statement” instead of you just coming and telling me on your first post. See what I mean?

22

He did.

That was a false statement that you made in your previous post. Again, proving that while your reading skills are adequate, you apparently need practise in the comprehension department.

23

False equals completely wrong.

Without puting words into Andros’ mouth, I assume he meant that it was false in the sense that both CPA’s and Dr.'s do frequently advertise, and that it was false in the sense that it does not “Cheapen” there profession to state that their services are available and potentially desirable.

I found the lucid brevity admirable.

On another note, I think Wildest Bill has posted some interesting thread topics, and has been generally a good sport, here.

When I first started at SDMB somebody said “Think twice, post once (Good advice had I followed it.”) I think if you do so most people will find the vast majority of your content very enjoyable.

24

He did not. He did not complete the thought. If you are going to say statement is false, you should then proceed to say why.

What part was false or why was it false? I mean sure I have seen some advertising for Doctors to perform surguries like RK but for the most part they don’t advertise nothing like the injury lawyers do.

And I have never seen I spot on TV for CPAs.

25

lissener, your analogy is absurd and reeks of the ignorant crap that Jeff_42 and Billy Boy have been spewing, although I give you points for being 1,000 times more articulate.

We* live in a republic governed by laws, not by fire. Is the legal system perfect? Hardly. But I will argue that in a republic based on the rule of law, the legal profession is indispensable. Lawyers study, shape, and improve the law. Their knowledge and study of the law allows them to challenge the state when it oversteps its bounds, protect the rights of individuals AND corporations, make sure that the state can effectively and fairly prosecute criminals while making sure that defendants receive a fair trial. The famous Shakespeare quote that gets taken out of context - “first kill all the lawyers” refers to the first step in destroying a democratic republic. If you get rid of the people who understand the law, you get rid of the rule of law and put citizens at the mercy of an arbitrary state.

Is it unfortunate that our legal system has become so complex that we need specialists to help us navigate it? Yes. Does the legal system sometimes get manipulated to produce unfair or undesirable results? Yes. If the other side has a lawyer, do you need one? You bet your ass - and in this country, if you are a criminal defendant, you have a right to one. Lawyers do not create the conflicts between individuals or conflicts between individuals and the state. Lawyers are dedicated to the process of law - all the trials, documents, motions, rules of evidence, etc. exist so that disputes (individual vs. state, individual vs. individual, institution vs. institutions, etc.) can be settled non-violently, according to agreed-upon rules.

Do all lawyers spend each day puffed up with the nobility of their great purpose? No, some of them advertise on late-night television and many of them are cynical bastards characterized in Grisham novels. But I would argue that even they have their part in the process.

If you’d like to take this out of the Pit, I’ll meet you in Great Debates - we can start a thread “Resolved: Live would be so much better if we got rid of lawyers and people just settled their differences on Judge Judy.”

And I don’t know about the cape - I’m not a lawyer. Wouldn’t be surprised, though.

Wildest Bill, with apologies to The Princess Bride:

Truly you have a dizzying intellect.

Do you understand that “plaintiff” does not necessarily equal “people like the bastards who sued me all those times.” In civil litigation, the plaintiff brings a grievance against the defendant. Both sides have attorney - you’ve been sued, so I assume you get this.

Do you understand that “plaintiff” does not automatically mean “wrong”? Do you understand that there are legitimate reasons that someone might need to bring a grievance to a court, and that they have a right to the help of an attorney? Do you understand that there are situations where you might need to be the plaintiff and hire an attorney to represent you? I’m not sure there are words small enough to make you understand.

Bill, if you are going to keep debating issues like this here, please realize that introduction of useless statistics and appeal to the “majority of the American people” is the last refuge of the idiot.

I stand by my first post in this thread.
*I’m referring to the U.S. here, as I don’t know about other legal systems. I’d be interested to know - how many other countries guarantee the right to attorney in criminal proceedings (for example)? Oh, and are any countries are governed by fire? :wink:

26

The thought was complete, Bill. But since you ask so nicely, I’ll expand.

Point the first: Doctors and hospitals advertise regularly. There is, however, less competition amongst doctors than among lawyers, so there is perhaps less advertising. But it’s there nonetheless. CPA’s advertise when they need to. Again, not as much, but advertise they do. Bear in mind also that there is more to advertising one’s business than television.

You are welcome to refuse to believe this. But your disbelief will not change the facts.

Point the second: When one is in business to make money, advertising one’s business cheapens nothing. To claim that the Holy Profession of Accountancy is above such petty concerns as making money is laughable. To claim that doctors in private practice are so noble as to refuse to “stoop” to advertising is similarly laughable.

I see you are already backtracking from “CPA’s,doctors and other professions don’t advertise” to “I have seen some advertising for Doctors.” Perhaps the trend will continue.

Verbose enough?

27

Mag:

Everythin you say is true (and it should go without saying that my analogy was somewhat hyperbolic, so I shouldn’t have to say so).

Lawyers, the fact of lawyers, are, is, unavoidable, and absolutely necessary. But lawyers, being generally from the more intelligent stratum of the species, are good at their job, and of course strive to be better at their job than other lawyers (competition being a very human thing); and (still being human), some–if not most–lawyers (like some if not most humans) are opportunistic. All these perfectly human qualities–intelligence, competitiveness, opportunism–add up to a world in which lawyers sometimes go a bit farther in the act of being a lawyer than is strictly beneficial to the individual human (read: non-lawyer) standing and breathing right in front of them. This makes it necessary for the living, breathing human to hire another lawyer, because the game being played is designed by and for, and judged by and for, lawyers.

Going to court–or even signing a legal document–is like being invited onto an NBA basketball court, only with your freedom or life at stake rather than just a ballgame. You can go up against the opposing team by yourself, or you can hire your own team to play for you by proxy, while you sit helpless on the sidelines and watch a process that, by and large, and in practice if not in theory, barely acknowledges your existence except in the most abstract sense, non-living, non-breathing sense.

I agree with you that this is all necessary with the system we’ve devised, and I say again that it’s only the addition of human nature to this abstract legal system that makes it the way I describe it, but there it is.

Calling it necessary doesn’t make it perfect.

28

Andros,

Yes that was enough verbage. :wink: Why didn’t you just say it in the first place was I was saying.

Anyway as far as advertising you are preaching to the choir. I totally agree with everything(I’m in the advertising business) you said except the part about “cheapening” the proffesion. If doctors or cpa’s for that matter advertise it is done usually very tastefully and no harm comes to anyone. On the otherhand when PI lawyers advertise it is usually very distasteful and they are urging people to sue someone. That is why are courts are so jammed up with lawsuits because lawyers are so busy trying to drum up business.

So people see these ads and come up with bogus claims to “make” money unethically. Do you ever wonder really how hurt some of these people are that sue. I mean what percentage of people are really hurt? That would be interesting to see.

One more point I don’t think doctors and cpas have the bad rap like lawyers do. So I really think it would be good start for lawyers to come out and tell the public we are not going to advertise anymore. I mean at one time they couldn’t advertise right? I think it was better that way.

29

I see many more print advertisements for doctors than for lawyers. I rarely see print advertisements for lawyers, in fact.

Are you referring to TV ads? Perhaps there are more lawyers than doctors advertising on TV but the percentage compared to lawyers as a whole is extremely small.

Many Big Six accounting firms advertise on both TV and in print: PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Arthur Andersen, Deloitte & Touche, KPMG, and Ernst & Young are all over the place.

I think that in the rather long-ago past, advertising was believed to “cheapen” professional service firms, but that hasn’t been the case for years. In my experience, one of the last holdouts to this “rule” has been law firms - if anything, they are advertising less than any of the other professional service firms.

But andros said it quite more efficiently with his one-sentence remark than I have done.

30

lissener,

I don’t think you and I disagree about anything major. Obviously competitiveness brings out the worst in people. The thing is our judicial system allows for this, is based on it - it assumes that both sides are going to go all out to make their case, and it creates very strict ethical and procedural rules for the game.

lissener, you brought up very interesting issues that help illustrate “where does all this discomfort with lawyers come from?” It seems that what you are really lamenting is people’s dependence on lawyers and alienation from the seemingly arcane procedures & language they deal in. “Lawyers are necessary, but my dependence on them makes me uncomfortable.” Your discussion of competitiveness and the analogy of the NBA game brings this out really well - are they working for me or just trying to win the game?

Thing is, the existence and role of lawyers doesn’t absolve the citizenry from achieving a basic understanding of the law - if you were involved in a legal case I bet you’d make damn sure you understood what was going on. The problem is that by and large we get our legal education from television shows and headlines announcing billion dollar tort awards - we only see the extremes and the drama. Until the day when we end up in deep shit - we suddenly need a lawyer, our money, freedom, custody of children, or life is at stake, we see all the complicated paper that gets generated, the stuff the guy says in court makes no sense to us - where are the impassioned crys for justice we see on The Practice? Why are you talking about “discovery” and “haebeus corpus” when my ass is on the line? We see the bill :eek: …

Huh, a Pit thread that turned into a Great…well, a debate anyway. Unfortunately Wildest Bill keeps posting.

Wildest Bill, back to Aeryn Sun’s OP - pick a stance, any stance:

Do you hate lawyers because:
a) you got sued a couple times and it was unpleasant
b) lawyers advertise and it cheapens the profession
c) If I did a poll I’d find that the majority of the American people hate plaintiffs lawyers (sic).
d) their advertising is not as classy as the understated, elegant advertising of CPAs - you wouldn’t hate them so much if they made a collective public relations decision to stop advertising (so that people wouldn’t hate them so much)

Your fancy footwork is making it hard for us to keep up with you.

31

andros:

Man, that’s funny. My sides hurt!

:: singing ::
It’s fun to charter an accountant
And sail the wide accountancy,
To find, explore the funds offshore
And skirt the shoals of bankruptcy…

32

I honestly didn’t think I needed to.

Stereotype.

Well, duh. That’s how they make their money. If a lawsuit is necessary to get what you are owed, it’s necessary. All the ads I’ve seen (and I beleieve I understand the type you find offensive) are the ones who urge action “if you’ve been injured in an accident” or “been unfairly treated.”

I’m sure the next time you are hurt by someone else’s negligence you’ll just suck it up. Good for you.

Again with the chicken and egg argument. You say that so many people sue others because there are so many lawyers. I say that there are so many lawyers because so many people sue others. Perhaps “society” is to blame, but violent anger toward a particular aspect of that society is not going ot change it.

Evidence?

No. I allow judges and juries to decide that.

Ludicrous. Shall we next tell Ford, Honda, and Chrysler that they cannot advertise?

Not to the best of my knowledge. Can you explain?

33

And yes, Lord Derfel, I’ve been humming it all morning. :slight_smile:

34

Damnit boys. He’s smoking dope again.

35

Wildest Bill, maybe if you’d get a job and stop watching TV at those odd hours when these supposed sleazy lawyers advertise (i.e., aiming their ads at their target audience of low-lifes with no job, no money and no brains) you wouldn’t be so morally aghast at their bravado. :rolleyes:

Esprix

36

You know what? Forget it - go fuck yourself. When presented with the fact that “loser pays” in lawsuits would mean poor people would be deprived of their right to sue, and your response is, “Fuck the poor! We need to make the system better!” then any benefit of whatever doubt I might have had about you evaporates like so much water on a hot day. I called you Hitler there and I’ll call you Hitler here. Try recognizing some basic humanity in yourself and others before you say “all lawyers are scum” or “the poor are worthless.”

Esprix

37

Esprix,

I never said screw the poor and I think a answered how it would work in my next post on that thread if you would have bothered to look.

But on the otherhand you persist on screwing every small mom and pop business because of the way the legal system is set up now. So they open up a business with their hard earned money and worked their butts off get it going and then some scum bucket loser and their hired gun attorney sue them over some stupid bs claim and they(the small business owner)know they are right so they go to court. Well they win but do they? They had to pay their lawyer 30 to 50 grand to defend them which was probably all the cash they had saved to run the busines so they have to close it down and lose all of their savings. Oh yea that is really a fair system we are in huh?

Maybe you should look and see if you got a little mustache growing under your nose first, before you go around calling people names buddy!

38

Oh, come on Bill, you should know that lawyers don’t cause frivolous lawsuits, it’s the people who hire the lawyers who cause frivolous lawsuits, right? I’m sure you can’t argue with that!

[off topic] Bill - looks like you’re going to be around for a bit, and normally I’m not this picky, but:

“you’re” = contraction for “you are”

“your” = belonging to you

Ex. - I’ll bet you’re going to pick up your dry cleaning later.

Proper usage increases apparent post intelligence by 10% regardless of content and topic!
[/off topic]

39

Even a proprietor of a “mom and pop” business usually has enough intelligence to purchase liability insurance, and consider that part of doing business.
Granted liability insurance might not cover intentional acts of the insured, such as EOE violations, but businessmen who don’t know how to run their business without illegally discriminating against their employees don’t really need to be in business.

As for lawyers advertising, for years there were restrictions against lawyers advertising, until someone (yep, a lawyer) realized that was a violation of the First Amendment (freedom of speech applies to some forms of advertising too).

40

Wildest Bill said

Now THAT conjured a weird image before I read on!

BTW, anyone who thinks lawyers cause lawsuits and are inherently useless. How else do you suggest people resolve conflicts such as negligent injury and contract breach, not to mention guilt or innocence? Fistfights?