Naruki no baka na hanashi

it would require completely scrapping each state's rules of ethics (especially the ones governing conflicts of interest) and starting over from scratch.

but aside from that, I still believe it's a bad idea.

The government shouldn't be in the business of providing the people with legal representation. Just how high do you want your taxes to be, anyway?

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rather than by the case, costs would be predictable and controllable. Nor would it necessarily result in poor legal service. There are plenty of professionals who work on salary (including attorneys), who maintain a high level of production and ethics.

As for the government providing people with legal representation, it already does. And specifically in criminal cases. Some of the problems with the public defender system would ameliorate if there weren't private lawyers available.

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public defenders are overloaded and don't represent all needy clients -- several indigent clients get free representation from local private attorneys appointed by the court.

And lawyers ARE paid set annual salaries - only partners are paid based on caseload. Maybe you're referring to fees rather than salaries, as fees include far more than just the lawyer's salary. They include the salaries of the support staff and the cost for leasing the office space and for purchasing/maintaining the computer systems, and all the other overhead involved with running a law office.

And no client has to accept a fee structure they don't want to accept. It's all there right up front when they accept the representation.

But my point wasn't about the salary, it was about the government.

The government should not be the sole provider of legal representation. The government already has too much bureaucracy. I believe it would be MORE of a bar to legal representation for people who need it.

There are plenty of low-cost and non-profit private legal agencies out there for people who need representation for civil matters. They do a good job with what they're doing.

Maybe what needs to change is that the public needs to be made more aware of the free/cheap options available to them. Turning attorneys into government workers would NOT fix the problem of unequal access to attorneys.

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I think it would.

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I think you trust the government too much.

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But I do trust people who are required to maintain their credentials and are protected from "conflict of interest" issues to try to do their jobs.

Perhaps it's because I see the whole legal system as a subtle means of government oppression.

I am slightly smarter than average intelligence. If I cannot understand a law by reading it and keeping a good dictionary next to me, then I think that law is overly complex.

And if I cannot do it, I know that a hell of a lot more people can't do it.

That means the average citizen is helpless in the face of organized (or at least powerful) corruption, whether it be government, business, or some rich evil bastard who just doesn't like you.

I think lawyers should be there merely to smooth things over, NOT because without them you cannot function.

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then that's a government problem.

Government creates laws. Lawyers try to help the public interpret them and follow them.

If the laws are too complex, petition your government to change them.

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The vast majority of legislation is drafted by attorneys. And you aren't naive enough to think that there aren't a few attorneys whose number one function is to meet their billable hours quota.

I'm not saying there aren't a few Atticus Finch-types out there. But they are far and away outnumbered by Borg-attorneys, who are quite happy to obfuscate in order to win.

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Written by attorneys, maybe... but passed by politicians. If the law is too complex, maybe the politicians shouldn't pass it. It's not lawyers' fault that politicians are passing complex laws.

I would posit that the vast majority of lawyers are ethical (because if they weren't, they'd have been reported to their state bar and disciplined by now). The limited cases where attorneys have been unethical and disciplined are the ones the news media decides to pick up, and thus almost every time the public hears about attorneys it's when one did something bad. It's rare the media will report on the great work done by a bunch of attorneys volunteering for a cause. It's rare that an attorney who does hir job well will get recognized at all.

I'd argue that most attorneys are worker-bees, who are there to do the work that the client needs. They're not activists out there every day trying to change the world, but neither are they trying to screw anyone over. You just only ever hear about those few trying to screw people over.

Case in point: California just passed an initiative prohibiting a certain kind of law suit because "unethical lawyers were abusing a loophole in the law". Yeah. One small firm found a loophole and was abusing it. ONE FIRM. They were disbarred for it. There was no significant risk of other firms exploiting that loophole because they too would be facing certain disbarment. But because one firm was unethical, the media picked it up and made it sound like this was an epidemic all over the state, and now it's far more difficult to file legitimate law suits against businesses committing unfair business practices.

But no, negative stereotypes never hurt anybody, right?

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You are blaming the politicians for something the lawyers came up with! Sure, blame the politicians for their part of the evil, but don't even think about excusing the lawyers!

Do you also think the vast majority of criminal are in jail, and the vast majority of people in jail are criminals?

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it takes 1-5 lawyers to write a bill, and over 200 politicians to pass it. I think the blame, therefore, does rightly fall on the politicians.

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in that you want the blame to fall only on the politicos.

Pontius Pilate didn't hang Jesus, it was the people.

You can't absolve yourself of guilt if you knowingly took part in something evil just because you didn't make the final decision to implement it.

If I hand out flyers to local neighborhood boys to go to a fun party with free candy hosted by some philanthropic organization called NAMBLA, I am definitely guilty even though I couldn't be a member. I may not be as guilty as they are, but I share some of the guilt at least.

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If you live in the neighborhood but aren't involved even remotely with the party or flyers, does that make you as guilty as the ones who are?

That's how I see the attacks on lawyers, saying lawyers are to blame. Some may have taken part, yes. But the rest had nothing to do with it.

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You said that the 1-5 lawyers who drafted the law were innocent because they didn't sign it into law. Actually, you may not have specifically said that, but you implied it strongly by implying that all the guilt is only for the legislators.

And for my example, I said I was handing them out. That makes me "involved". And not remotely, but practically intimately.

I never said anything about other people in the neighborhood who didn't take part in it.

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we'll just have to agree that we're interpretting each others comments completely differently than we each intend.

and with that, I suggest you read my latest post in my journal, as it's pertinent to this overall discussion and is the reason I'm withdrawing from this discussion.

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Don't feel bad about your choices. Just because a lot of people have bad feelings about lawyers doesn't make the stereotype right. And it also doesn't mean that "things are getting worse". There have always been bad stereotypes.

If you are interested in what you do and want to be ethical about it, then I encourage you to do your best. But for your own sanity, you'll need to develop a thicker skin (and that applies to no matter what you do).

Hell, I know that I didn't deserve to be kicked out of UF, but I didn't whine like some other people did. I made my case and then accepted the verdict. (Actually, I made my case after the verdict was handed out, thereby alerting me that there was a need for a case to be made - but why quibble over mere chronology?)

Just because a lot of people say bad things about me doesn't mean I should stop existing. If they were right, then I might consider it. But most all of them were dead wrong.

So sleep well and try not to let these kinds of discussions bother you in the future.

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"...no client has to accept a fee structure they don't want to accept...."

True. They can (and do) simply go without legal representation or forego access to the legal system at all.

...the free/cheap options available to them.

Those free and/or cheap options aren't available equally across the country and have been sharply cut by the supporters of "smaller government." In addition, there are significant limitations on the type of help those services are allowed to offer.

Forcing those with low-incomes to depend on charity legal services doesn't provide nondiscriminatory access to the courts.

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He he he. Heck, it was either this or kill them. And just think of how much cleanup would be involved then.

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Killing them, that is. At least the sleezy ones.

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Once you start in with the "but just the $quality ones", then you get a lot of yahoos who take that to mean they can kill whoever cost them a case.

No, we have to have an all-or-nothing solution to remove the personal vendetta angle.

And lawyercide is just too messy.

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With Dick and Bush in the White House, I think it's obvious we've given up on any facade of caring about "conflict of interest" about 4 years ago.

Seriously, the conflict of interest issue is one that would need to be worked on, but it's not insurmountable. And otherwise it should be okay.

Half or more of the craptacular legal system is there simply to make lawyers indispensible. That's the incentive behind the fact that lawyers do what they can to make the system more difficult.

If we socialize the legal profession, that removes the incentive to fuck with the legal system. It means the lawyers will now want things to be as simple as possible, because they don't get paid more just to keep Joe Citizen from going it alone.

Taxes would actually go down after the full effect of such a system was in place.

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And that might be the biggest argument against socializing lawyers (he he, some of the lawyers I know are hardly paper-trained, much less socialized...). The people attracted to teaching either really love it and want to be there (which would be a good thing) or literally can't make a living doing anything else and are wedged in their bureaucratic niche (a bad thing).

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And what sort of representation could a person expect from a lawyer who gets paid the same whether they spend any time on your case or not? would you expect that lawyer to work overtime to make sure that they got every document and piece of evidence they could from the other side, or to make sure they meet the deadlines? Would you expect them to argue that a law should be changed because its result is unjust?

And what about the clients who distrust the government - the ones who need protection from the government. Do you really see them being willing to approach an attorney who's an employee of the government when they're in need of help? When you're an employee of the government, who's your client? The person who walks in the door begging for help, or the entity that pays your salary and can fire you?

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Or perhaps a very strong one for getting rid of ALL government jobs.

And your last argument just completely ignored my part about putting in protections from the "the boss can fire you" trick.

Maybe I'm odd, but I never get this emotional when someone starts talking about my profession.

You're not the only person I've seen get really riled up at an "outsider" talking about your profession. Most recently it was a pharmacist who got really pissed because I said pharmacist's should follow professional ethics rather than personal morals.

You, being (soon) a lawyer, are going to be in my position a hell of a lot. Meaning, you're going to be an outsider telling people what's wrong with their jobs. How would you try to do that without them getting bent out of shape at you?

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I'd start by not putting up with people saying that all people in X profession are inherently unethical. I wouldn't want people to be on the defensive thinking I agreed with the statements made by ignorant people who insist on applying negative stereotypes across the board to a group where they may actually apply to only as many as 5-10% of the people in the group.

Second, I'd try to understand the profession and how it's run. I wouldn't make assumptions, being an outsider.

Third, I wouldn't try to tell them how to do their job. I'd ask them how they think they can change, and I'd try to focus on the purpose for the profession to exist in the first place.

Of course, I'm NOT going into a position where I'll be telling people what's wrong with their jobs. I don't know anyone who does that, and I'm not sure why you think that's what lawyers do.

I don't know what your profession is, but maybe it's one that doesn't get attacked nearly daily by people suggesting that the best thing that could happen in this world would be to get rid of your profession entirely, possibly even by killing everyone who chose to take up your profession. It gets rather tiring, and you get to the point that you hold out home that the more intelligent people will see the reason in the purpose of keeping the profession around... and then you get slapped in the face by an otherwise intelligent person indicating they really have no clue why your profession exists in the first place and why it's organized how it is.

I had held out hope that you of all people would understand the need for attorneys to be separate and independent from the government.

It makes me wonder whether anyone who hasn't studied law (whether or not with the intent to practice law) is aware of the true need for independent attorneys, and makes me lose hope that my likely future profession (no longer by choice, now by necessity to pay off student loans) will be able to persist under such persecution and misunderstanding.

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When you are telling someone else how to do their jobs, you would start by not putting up with them saying something about some other profession? That doesn't make sense.

Your second reason is good.

Third is bad. You are telling them how to do their job. That's inescapable. It's part of the condition set for this exercise, as well as being modeled after what you will be doing in practice.

Plus, your "focus on the purpose for the profession to exist" is unprofessional of you. If a profession is needed, then you focus on what's necessary to be changed. If it's not needed, then you have a whole other situation to deal with. You just assume a profession is needed, and that's not what a lawyer is supposed to do.

Naturally, a lot of lawyers don't do that, I suppose. But anyone who sues a company for bad practices is telling them how to do their jobs. Suing doctors for malpractice, for example. Or going into environmental law, for another.

I mentioned the pharmacist getting upset that I was telling him how to do his job (except I didn't know he was one until we were well into the discussion). I don't think pharmacists get the same kind of insulting treatment that lawyers get, but he responded just as emotionally as you or anyone else. And I've seen plenty of people in my own profession get the same way.

I'm obviously not someone who wants to "kill all the lawyers", but I do think the fact that we cannot function without them is a Very Bad Thing.

You don't seem to want to even consider such an argument yet, let alone rationally discuss it without feeling personally "slapped in the face". I happen to know at least two lawyers who would have no trouble with this discussion, if that helps you understand that just being a lawyer is no reason for being overly sensitive to rational discussion about it.

And believe me, this has been rational discussion on my part. I could pretend to do "persecution and misunderstanding" if you wanted to see the difference, but I don't think you could take it, and I certainly wouldn't be sincere in giving it.

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