Re: Law, Lawyers and Liberty (Was: College major advice)

From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Tue Apr 02 2002 - 08:57:26 MST


Zero Powers wrote:
>
> >From: Greg Burch <gregburch@gregburch.net>
>
> > > From: Forrest Bishop
> > > We need more lawyers like
> > > we more cancer. No offense intended, just the facts, sir.
> >
> >A couple of final points. First, when someone breaches a contract with
> >you, who you gonna call?
>
> Exactly. Lawyers are like cops. Nobody likes them until they need one.

Except that paying a lawyer hundreds of bucks an hour to do his job is
legal, which is why they are so much easier to find. It's illegal to pay
a cop this much to do his job, which is why they are never around and
take too long to show up.

> California has the highest number of lawyers per capita of anyplace in the
> world. And, recent highly publicized law firm layoffs notwithstanding, very
> few of them go wanting for work for very long. The "cancer," if you will,
> is our litigious society, not the lawyers or their number. Blaming
> litigiousness on lawyers is like blaming forest fires on firefighters.

No, firefighters don't initiate fires, they only put them out. Your
statement would only be true if lawyers only represented defendants and
not plaintiffs.

> Lawyers can't litigate with having clients (most of whom are *not* lawyers)
> who are involved in litigation.

Untrue on your last point. Plenty of lawyers create lawsuits then go
looking for clients (i.e. the Erin Brokovich strategy, pioneered by
Ralph Nader).

The only reason we need lawyers today is because there are people
willing to sit on a jury and be conned that acts like fraud, theft,
assault, murder, etc are not really crimes or torts. The degree to which
societies need lawyers is directly proportionate to how badly such
societies (or its constituent members) have lost their moral/ethical
compass.



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