Lawdog, I am sorry you have chosen to leave the thread because of the ridiculing and demeaning commentary made about lawyers. Unfortunately there are many conscientious lawyers whose character and name is besmirched by these generalizations.
However, have you have stopped to consider why a large majority of the non-lawyer public has great disdain for lawyers? Part of this has to do with the deleterious effect lawyers have on the functioning of our society. Many perceive that lawyers have a license to attack and intimidate others without any constraint on their own behavior. There is no effective way to fight back when a lawyer makes the most outrageous commentary and statement in a legal forum. Lawyers seem to feel it is "just business" when they threaten normally scrupulous and well intended people with financial and professional ruin. They seem to pride themselves on "winning" regardless of its effects on people or the corporations for whom those people work. They supposedly are sworn to represent the "truth" in its fullest form, but what many people experience is lawyers bent on winning with the most nefarious means of avoiding or obfuscating the truth. Truth means nothing, winning and money means everything.
The representation that lawyers are simply responding to demand of the population is only in part true. There are many cases where lawyers purposefully utilize high profile tactics to win "clients", particularly in the lucrative "class action" and personal injury arena. Here are some examples of what makes citizens outraged.
A) A few days ago I received a periodic publication from GW2k. GW2k use to not specify that 15" monitors only had 13.9" of diagonal screen, and 17" monitors only had 15.9", etc. GW2k was "Lerached", that is attacked by his law firm and some other law firms which preyed on some citizens greed to extort from GW2k money for having made the egregious error of not specifying that a such and such monitor was really only such and such diagonal. So what did the consuming public win from this case. For everyone who bought a monitor between 1990 and 1995 from GW2k, a $13 credit towards the purchase of another item will be issued to be used between certain dates. And if the individual can prove that they didn't use the product for business, they can, in lieu of the $13 apply for a $6 refund by filling out a bunch of paper work, etc. TOTAL GARBAGE IMHO. (Unfortunately I tossed the publication so I can't be sure of all of the numbers and details.) What did this stupid lawsuit accomplish? It generated enormous utilization of GW2k's legal and personnel resources for months. It cost the stock holders and future purchasers of equipment lots of money to make up for the losses GW2k had to incur. BTW, the legal notice described the plaintiffs lawyers award, $5,900,000 plus something like $250k in excess expenses. (Sorry, I can't remember the exact numbers so someone may be kind enough to publish them here.) This was a great service to the public.
B) Flight 800 TWA suit. The FAA couldn't even determine how the crash occurred before the lawyers were subtly soliciting clients and even entering law suits blaming TWA for negligence, etc. Just disgusting. What about all the hard working employees of TWA who would lose their job if TWA was forced into bankruptcy by these kind of actions. How about the notions of personal responsibility for risk. Lawyers have created a society in which if an adverse event occurs, it must be someone else's fault and therefore the "injured" party is entitled to a guarantee against that adversity. There is no such thing as unpredictable events, serendipity, etc. No, every act has a cause and someone else is to blame. This society is tired of that behavior because it creates suspicion, defensiveness and paranoia. How many doctors won't stop as good Samaritans because they are afraid they will be sued for trying to save someone's life and not succeeding, or only partially succeeding. How many people over document everything that they do in the vain hope, inculcated by the legal profession, that somehow documentation is a defense against accusations of error. The reality is that no documentation is a defense against being sued, it is usually just more of a spider web of complexity to feed accusations and an extra burden and expense that the society incurs in the hope of protecting against lawsuits.
C) How about the great breast implant outrage. Billions of dollars in damages to vain parties who entered into this arrangement but then, feeling dissatisfied, used the courts to TRUMP UP ADVERSE HEALTH CARE CHARGES to extort billions from a couple of companies and almost bankrupt them or drive them out of business. Dow Corning, etc. were, in fact, not liable for any medical ill. Comprehensive prospective studies by a woman researcher at Harvard conclusively demonstrated that there was no correlation between implants and any disease states, except the disease of GREED AND AVARICE.
Need I continue with the examples? They are rampant in our society. What boss has been able to fire an employee on merit without incurring a sex, age, race, or other kind of lawsuit? Why do companies have such expensive "restructuring" charges? Most of it goes to buy off employees who are let go so they do not sue. It is out of control and lawyers are perceived as the major force behind this society run amok with laws about ordinary human relationships.
It is quit unfortunate that law schools perpetuate this distorted notion of citizen relationships, almost myopically focused on narrow definitions of rights and case law, rather than addressing the big question which is: "Is this the way we want citizens to treat each other?"
The resounding answer by a vast majority of intelligent and self reliant citizens is "NO." Unfortunately the legal profession controls the legislatures and thereby thwarts change that would benefit the citizens at the lawyers expense. In my state, lawyers who would argue the opposite about any other issue find it impossible to grant the citizenry the right to choose no-fault auto insurance. Their reason is that no-fault does not benefit the "injured." Unfortunately the "injured" would likely be the lawyers, so instead, the vast populace is injured by those in control.
Everyone on this board, and every other board on SI have hundreds of lawyer stories based in part by what they read or hear in the public media, in part by their own experience. The denizens of these boards represent relatively intelligent people many who are professionals and accomplished in their own right. Unless your law school colleagues begin to hear the outrage experienced by the citizenry, you will unfortunately build a wellhead of anger and hostility which, when released, has a tendency to be (unfairly) destructive. It is the conditions from which "mass" movements arise. We witness these actions in societies all around us, but assume they will never happen here. Revolutionary Russia and China in the early 1900's, Nazi Germany in the 30's and 40's, Cambodia in the '70's, Bosnia in the 80's and 90's. Let's hope some rationality can return to our social order with the help of the legal profession, not its obstruction.
It is truly unfortunate that the vast majority of hard working and decent lawyers have to be contaminated by the reputation of an unfortunately large number of lawyers whose behavior is antithetical to interests of the citizenry. Perhaps you could discuss this reality in some of your law school classes. |
