A good rant on lawyers

Status
Not open for further replies.
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Excerpted from "Remembering Amadou Diallo"
by Stuart Buck,
from Intellectual Capital, http://www.intellectualcapital.com

"We all suffer from a cognitive bias known as the availability heuristic. The availability heuristic (identified by psychologists Kahneman and Tversky in a famous 1973 article) causes us to overestimate the probability of an event if an example comes readily to mind.

Thus, when people are asked whether more words begin with "r" or have "r" as the third letter, people wrongly say that more words begin with "r" -- because it is easier to think of such examples. People overestimate the likelihood of plane crashes versus auto crashes, because of the coverage given airline crashes. Many women overestimate their risk of dying of breast cancer -- which gets lots of publicity -- even though they face a far higher risk of dying from heart disease.

<snip>

The combination of the availability heuristic and the media's focus on the unusual gives us a perverse effect: When a bad thing becomes more rare and therefore less of a problem, the media gives it more publicity and causes people to see it as *more* of a problem. Think of it this way -- if thousands of people were being shot and killed every day, ...no single killing could possibly receive as much news coverage.... The media simply would not have the resources to cover individual killings if they were commonplace.[/quote]

Likewise, we hear of instances of "our overly litigious society" everyday. This doesn’t mean that’s how it really is, though. Most of us have heard of a frivolous lawsuit of some kind, but I would bet that very few of us have actually participated in one.


------------------
RKBA!
"The people have the right to bear arms for their defense and security"
Ohio Constitution, Article I, Section 4 Concealed Carry is illegal in Ohio.
Ohioans for Concealed Carry Website
 
Gosh Futo,

I didn't think I flamed you in the first place. I specifically stated that not all lawyers were bad. And I thought that I made clear that the group behavior as manifest by the ABA and Trial Lawyers Assoc. (TLA) is what I objected to.

But I think you must have lost your composure in the composition of your vehement reply (at least it seemed vehement to me, being an ignorant average joe that has not even been to law school or reading the cases that would no doubt clarify my misunderstanding).

You did not comment on my experience being attacked as a litigation tactic. You did not comment on SLAPP. You did not comment on shareholder suits brought against companies that fail to produce the investment returns desired. You did not present any information about efforts by the legal profession to control "frivolous" litigation, such as conference sessions with titles like "stopping frivolous suits". You mention there are many people involved, could you point me to a few, please?

I went to the ABA website http://www.abanet.org and found no mention of it, but found this continuing education course:

Winning ... Without Losing Your Professionalism
Faculty
Richard de Bodo Sandra Hicks Cox
Andra Barmash Greene Hon. John G.
Koeltl Victoria Thomas McGhee Patricia
Lee Refo Elizabeth S. Stong

Produced by the Section of Litigation and ABA-CLE, 1997

Description
The series provides practical methods to deal with abusive, unfair and unethical tactics directed against you and your client. Experienced litigators explain effective techniques that allow you to win with professionalism. Corporate Counsel discuss the qualities and skills they look for in choosing a firm to represent them. In addition to a frank discussion, each of the three programs in the series includes a demonstration of the skills being taught. The first program in the series, The Beauty Contest, examines the elements of a winning presentation at a "beauty contest." The second program, Taking the Deposition, examines techniques for taking depositions when faced with an obstructive, unprofessional opposing counsel. The final program, Defending the Deposition, examines techniques for defending depositions when the counsel taking the deposition are abusive and unprofessional.

Running Time: 2 hours, 30 minutes

And this one:
http://www.abanet.org/cle/catalog/2000/TORT163.html


Tort Issues

1.00 HRS


Faculty
Robert Coffey Allain Hardin Karen
Kendall Hall F. McKinley III

Production
Produced by ABA-CLE, the ABA Journal, the ABA Membership Department and the Sections of General Practice, Solo and Small Firm, Litigation, and Tort and Insurance Practice, and the Standing Committee on Solo and Small Firm Practitioners, 1998

Description
This program discusses what to tell clients about summertime torts that can cloud over their outings. Topics include: backyard games and play equipment, swimming pools and diving boards. A liability checklist for play equipment, pools and sports is included. The program expands on article "It's a Jungle Out There" published in August '98 ABA Journal.

Running Time: 1 hour

I merely mention these to point out that: 1) even other lawyers indicate training is needed to deal with the abusive and unprofessional actions of opposing lawyers. But who are these lawyers that this training program is preparing you to counter? 2) Those really dangerous backyard toys may have a meritorious suit so that a good attorney will help mange risk for the client by chaining up the swing and sawing off the diving board. I mean it would be unconscionable to have anyone using these things (or purchasing a cup of hot coffee) accept the responsibility. 3) Funny I did not see any classes on reducing litigation on the site.

I did download the 65 page legislative priorities summary of the ABA. A lot of topics there could make an ignorant observer wonder. (If anyone want it I would email it to you it is an eyeopener!)

I must question your assertion that the ABA and TLA are not representative of lawyers in general what proportion of lawyers belong to the ABA or a TLA?

I also wonder at the coincidence that many legislative initiatives to control litigation are somehow not effective, despite the number of sharp attorneys helping to write those laws? :)

You agree with me about the ABA ("the anti 2nd group"), and you confuse my understanding of your anger of having lawyers criticized even more.

Dennis and bookie mention good experiences.

Yes indeed.

But Dennis says that an incompetent lawyer caused him to go back to his more expensive competent one. What happens if the incompetent lawyer can't get work from clients like Dennis? Do we think that s/he might try to drum up some other business since they did not do so good in real estate contracts?

And a question for Dennis, did the problems your more competent and expensive lawyer help solve have another lawyer involved on the other side???

Futo, 'me thinks you protest to much'.

And when I get my ignorant tit in a legal wringer (as I am so wont to do) I will indeed want a competent lawyer to help me. But I fail to see the logical connection between me needing help and a general feeling that the profession as a whole needs to examine it behavior in our society.

Again, I am not saying that we need to get rid of all the 'bad groups who disagree with me' as Dennis parodied in his rant. And I do know that we need our allies in the gun family.

But is it ok to opine that large groups of lawyers are acting irresponsibly and should be educated so our society can improve?

Is this different than asking our LEO brothers to examine the tactics and mindset that appear to play a part in the alienation of the poor ignorant citizen from the law enforcement profession?

Is it because it is your sacred cow that is now being examined?

Futo, your first sentence of your 3rd post about how TFL people are not better than average joes is also pretty lacking in open-mided analysis, and is at least condecending don't you think? Is that how you want to present the noble legal profession?

Futo, you don't to feel attacked here.

Do what you think is right.

Maybe you could help educate others like me, who need to be reassured that the legal profession feels responsible for more than billable hours, partner bonuses and investment returns.

You said you don't want to respond, and that's fine, I think your 3 posts on this topic and my 2 posts present a pretty complete picture of how we feel.

Your brother in the quest for truth and compassion, a mere ignorant average joe,

Noel
 
All this talk about lawsuits is making me sick . Wait a minute .....you people made me sick . Yeah , sick . I can sue , God above I can SUE . I'm gonna be rich . Rich , do you hear me . I can sing the Hymn of Litigation . " I'm rich at last , I'm rich at last . Thank God in Heaven , I'm rich at last ."

------------------
TOM
SASS AMERICAN LEGION NRA
 
You dummys. Get in a bind with a NICS check or any other gun related matter (criminal penalties), and who you going to see-your barber??? 2nd Amendment lawyers are the ones who have, and will continue to, challenge these "laws" in villages, towns, cities, states, and in federal courts. Go ahead, try and do it yourself! 99% of lawyers are honest, hardworking, and dedicated to representing their clients-the majority are smucks like you (and me). Lawyers protect your constitutional rights--YOUR RIGHTS--when you are charged with a offense. Every day, everywhere. You dummys are buying into the media bulls###. Rant and rave on this board all you want. You get your a## in a jamb, you will be at my office, hat in hand, your freedom and livelihood on the line. You dummys. Look to your right, look to your left, and one of these individuals will sing the praises of their lawyer, who they trust more than anyone. The legal system, our government, will chew you up and spit you out--broke, incarcerated, humiliated. The only protection you have is your LAWYER.
 
RR,
Well, being pro-gun, you could at least tell us where your office is. ( :) )
If you practice in an area of law that I might need, I'd rather give my dough to a pro-gun lawyer than an anti-gun lawyer.
(fer sure!)

------------------

Either you believe in the Second Amendment or you don't.
Stick it to 'em! RKBA!

TFL End of Summer Meet, August 12th & 13th, 2000
 
[rant]
Old joke – What do you call 100 dead lawyers? A good start.

Another joke – The fence between Heaven and Hell was broken and needed repair.

St. Peter called over the fence to the devil and said “ Hey, devil. The fence needs repairs. How about I have the fence fixed and we split the cost?”

The devil replies “No way. If you want it fixed, you pay for it.”

St. Peter says “ Well, devil, I will have the fence repaired and then I will sue you for your half of the work.”

The devil retorts “Ha, where do you think you are going to find a lawyer?”
[/rant]

The fact of the matter is that although lawyers generally have a bad reputation (there are some good ones) and when you need one – you had better get the best one you can afford.

No offense intended, just my 2 cents.

Skyhawk
 
Noel,
Sorry missed your question...
"And a question for Dennis, did the problems your more competent and expensive lawyer help solve have another lawyer involved on the other side???"

Answer: Don't know, don't care. It was broke, he fixed it. "The End"
 
I think there is some miscommunication present.

I was not condemning all lawyers.

I was decrying the behavior of irresposible lawyers and groups (ABA, TLA).

Others, have for some time, been making observations similar to mine:
http://Overlawyered.com/topics/ethics.html
http://www.abanet.org/cpr/professionalism.html
http://www.ncsc.dni.us/ccj/NATLPLAN/execsumm.htm
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/cjm_37.htm

THe last URL contains this excerpt:

BEGIN EXCERPT

When I got to debate Alan Dershowitz on television, he was running into a lot of flak from the audience at one stage because he had been discussing techniques that came up in his criminal defense practice, and of which he seemed to approve, some of which struck the audience as taking advantage of tricks or loopholes—techniques like telling the client on first meeting: don’t advise me whether you’re guilty or not, it would tie my hands to know; leave me free to come up with the best defense. The audience was not happy at all with that, but Dershowitz came back with a line that did give them pause; he said go ahead and boo, but if your child were arrested and charged with something, you would want a lawyer just like me.

As a predictive matter, surely he was right. Many or most of them—of us—up against the wall, would call the lawyer whose ethical code allowed him to, shall we say, retain a lot of options in vigorous representation. I can’t improve on Judge Laurence Silberman’s great line about this: just because we may play the horses doesn’t mean we have to respect bookies.

So, as I say, there’s a grain of truth to the bartender analogy. Many of us do head for the bartender who mixes the stiffest drinks, rather than the drinks that may be best for our own health or society’s. (I trust you will henceforth have a new image in your mind when you read about the leadership of “The Bar.”) Nor are bartenders or bookies the only occupations we might choose as analogous if the function of lawyering is merely to cater to the frailties of human nature. You might indeed raise the “tobacco company analogy;” those companies, too, respond to a genuinely pre-existing consumer demand, providing a product that’s voluntarily bought even if some of the customers may later regret buying it.
To be sure—to revert to an earlier point—no one is forced to drink beverages or place bets or smoke cigarettes foisted on them by their adversaries. It’s worth keeping in mind, lest we be tempted to compare legal practice to a market, that a majority of the consumers of the product aren’t taking it voluntarily. No wonder we see so many Mickey Finns and exploding cigars.

Any theory of the unpopularity of the legal profession must come to grips with three observations:

One is that the unpopularity of the bar is not merely some lingering prejudice hanging on in the least educated or worldly parts of society, among persons who may never have gotten to know lawyers or work with them on a practical basis. Indeed, the evidence is abundant and disturbing that the more continuing contact people have with lawyers, the more vocal and fully formed a critique they tend to give of them. Notoriously these days, doctors, accountants, and practicing business people are among the groups most upset with lawyers and most convinced that self-regulation of the legal profession has failed. This is not a matter of being unpopular because people don’t know you and only read bad things in the papers.

Second—and contrary to both the dentist theory and the bartender theory—lawyers as a
profession have not always been nearly this unpopular. If you trace this tension back through American history, in fact, you find an interesting pattern: the abuses we see today are to be sure not new, but they were formerly considered to be more on the fringe, rather than typical of the profession. Nineteenth-century America, especially the turbulent big cities, did generate many celebrated criminal cases in which, every so often, demagogic lawyers managed to spring obviously guilty malefactors. And there were abuses in civil law, including appeals to sympathetic local juries for unreasonably high damage awards, that do seem to foreshadow elements of today’s runaway civil litigation. There was some solicitation and stirring up of business by lawyers, and also hardball tactics of various sorts.
Yet there was a feeling that the legal profession as a whole stood against such tactics, that the unscrupulous lawyer was an exception looked down on by most in the profession and under pressure from them. Now the public senses that the bad lawyer has much more of an open field.

And third, the legal profession continues to enjoy a high degree of public esteem in most
foreign countries, as it used to here, though it goes without saying that the operations of law are painful in other countries, and though human nature, including the urge to sic a mean lawyer on one’s opponent, is also nothing unique to America.

Think about it. Until recently, the general norm here as throughout the world was for law to be a very highly respected profession, one you would be pleased for your children to enter aside from the likely financial rewards. It is recently, in the United States, that the profession’s respect and prestige has fallen from its historically high level, even as its financial emoluments have increased.

END EXCERPT

The NATALPLAN link has direct references to the perception of the legal profession by the public as well.

I really will now leave the discussion to those who have any further interest in it at this point.

I have also emailed Futo.

Regards,

Noel
 
Forgot which forum this was.

:D I hate it when that happens. :D

LawDog

[This message has been edited by LawDog (edited June 01, 2000).]
 
I am a lawyer.

I detest the ABA. And I am not a member, nor would I be.

When you get charged with violating some stupid anti-gun law you had never heard of, you will want a lawyer like me. I will bust my ass to clear you. I support *your* RKBA, and I have the education and experience to go into the courtroom and fight for it. It's a good thing that someone does, or you would be at the mercy of the other side.

And yes, I get paid to go to court. Do you work for free? I didn't think so. And to answer the obvious question (probably related to "blood-sucking parasites" or something along that line), I am far from rich.

Lawyers. Some are rotten, most aren't. I like to think at least that I am not. So I resent being tossed in wholesale with the "rottens" of the legal profession.
 
Arizona Eric, a lawyer, says, "... I resent being tossed in wholesale with the 'rottens' of the legal profession."

Right on! Good people hate to be included with the bad part of their group!

Equally so with honest cops, good school teachers, judges who believe in the Constitution, most teenagers, careful gun owners, etc. etc.

For the umpteenth time. As gun owners, we do not have so many allies that we can alienate entire groups of people.

Personally, I would like to see the targets of our "rants" limited to individuals (preferably by name), or to groups of obviously like-minded dipsticks (eg.HCI, etc.) rather than large groups of individuals - many of whom would like to be our allies in restoring the Constitution.

------------------

Either you believe in the Second Amendment or you don't.
Stick it to 'em! RKBA!

TFL End of Summer Meet, August 12th & 13th, 2000
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top